


1994: The Collected Asides

by Vee



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Coming of Age, F/F, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:03:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So over the course of the writing of 1994, I've also been writing aside fics from different points-of-view or timelines. Until now they've always just been Tumblr exclusives, but now here they are, since I stopped being lazy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erwin and Levi Backstory

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [1994](https://archiveofourown.org/works/875756) by [Vee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee). 



My keys, and $29.56 worth of cash – all the material possessions I had to my name – were in the plastic bag in my hand. I’d been wearing heels when I was picked up and so I was holding them in my other hand, standing on the sidewalk, feeling like I hadn’t showered in weeks.

“Can I drop you off at home?” He asked, suit jacket over one arm, other hand in his pocket. He was wearing suspenders. I was a complete sucker for suspenders.

“Don’t have a home, right now,” I replied. On top of feeling as filthy as a human scab, I’d been nursing a slow-throb headache and a case of the shakes for almost twenty-four hours. I needed to get high. I kept those words from spilling over, though. “I’m staying with a friend.”

He knew something was off about that. I watched a taxi drive by. Taxis didn’t usually patrol the streets in this city; it probably made the same circuit past the jailhouse every few hours, hoping to pick up bastards like me fresh from the tank.

“Do you want to go back there?” He asked.

“No,” I said, and turned to him. I let my eyes sweep his body, and even knowing I couldn’t have looked very appealing in my state I still laid it on thick. “But what other option do I have?”

There had to be some inner struggle, because it was obvious that he didn’t want to look at me the way he’d gotten used to looking at me. After what I’d been through, he wanted to exercise some decorum. I was just detached, just shaky and selfish enough to stop short of thanking him for his consideration. Instead, I silently noted it as he stopped himself from scanning me too hungrily, and I was almost amused to see him look so sad.

“It’s okay, by the way. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around m—“

“I can get you a hotel room,” he offered.

My eyes narrowed. That wasn’t the pronoun he’d wanted to use. “Me,” I asked, “or us?”

“That depends on what you want.” He tilted his head toward me, and then gestured that I follow. Hearing him put it that way made my breath catch, and I was very happy to feel overwhelmed by the same desire he’d sparked the very first time I saw him. I kept pace behind him, noticing that he took short steps to allow me to do so, and he definitely caught the uncontrollable noise I made when I saw his car.

Suspenders and a Supra Mark IV. How else was he going to torture me?

“It’s new,” he informed me with an almost bashful smile, unlocking the door of the car on my side, opening it for me.

“Yeah. I know. This is fresh off the fucking assembly line.”

“I couldn’t resist a birthday present to myself.”

I slid in and tried to contain my urge to moan. He took it as a cue to show off. It was foreplay when he dropped the clutch on the highway and calmly showed me, rather than told me about, how the turbo felt and what it sounded like. I arched my back from the seat and contained my urge no longer; in addition to a moan, I couldn’t help blurting out: “Fucking hell, you wanna make me come already?”

As a response, he just kept pushing it, and the car pulled right along. It actually did make me tighten a little between the legs, watching him handle the gear shift as the chassis shuddered beneath me on the way to 100.

“I don’t want to tempt fate where the police are concerned,” he said smoothly, decelerating as teasingly as denying an orgasm. I already had a taste, then, of his M.O.

He’d used the word “hotel” and I thought of a seedy Days Inn, the Motel 6 by the mall, maybe something as nice as a Ramada. Instead, Erwin pulled into the parking lot of the Marriott and I shot him an incredulous look.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I didn’t ask whether he intended to smuggle me in, lest they bar me from entering.

I announced my intention to shower the minute I walked over the threshold of the room. He asked whether I wanted him to fetch some clothes.

“I don’t plan on wearing them most of the time I’m here, anyway.” I slipped into the bathroom before he could react to that, particularly.

He was gone when I emerged regardless, and even though I feared for a few minutes that he might have left me there, Erwin returned with a cheap short set and Chinese for two.

We didn’t talk much, that first evening. I made a few comments about the plushness of the room, we watched whatever was on TV, and I ate until I was far too full to even consider sex. We slept in separate beds. I felt odd about the whole thing, so to unburden my own conscience I made sure to iron out that particular possibility before I fell asleep. “I hope you’re not expecting anything from me in return, right now.”

The way I heard him give a little chirping laugh before saying, “No, not really,” told me that he knew how transparent I was being.

I woke up before he did, realized my headache was still there, and I knew I was starting to jones for more than I could ask him to provide. I contemplated my lot in life for exactly as long as it was tolerable before I walked to his bed, straddled his sleeping body, and flattened my palms on his chest. He blinked awake while I was exploring his body with my hands. I muttered, “Shit, you’re an exquisite bastard” in lieu of “good morning.”

Erwin, though sleepy, propped himself up on one elbow and slid the other arm around me. I’d been through enough shit in recent nights to be anything but honored by his morning breath when he kissed me. I fit into the strong curve of his body perfectly and he shifted beneath me like I was weightless. The physical greeting lasted minutes. We kissed deeply, languidly, and I smiled when I felt his cock start to rise through his boxer shorts against me. He pulled my ear close to kiss it, and then he whispered his own special good morning wish.

“I’m a grown man, but I will cry if you don’t let me absolutely wreck your ass.”

Less than a minute later, I found out he was crafty bastard as well as an exquisite one, and had picked up a bottle of Astroglide along with the clothes and the Chinese food.

I’d only allowed Erwin Smith (whose last name I hadn’t known until I saw him write a check when he picked me up) to mostly-dry fuck me in a hallway for a glorious, excruciating ten minutes or so before he offered me his phone number and told me to call him sometime, preferably in the evening since he worked during the day. I’d only thought about what he might be like beyond that, with the proper motivation and preparation for long-distance fucking.    

He only worried me a little by establishing so many things up front. Did I mind being spanked, did I mind being scratched, did I have any aversion to rimming, to being fingered, to having my hands bound by a silk necktie? “I’m seriously game for whatever,” I informed him finally, and he laughed and told me he just liked to make sure the boundaries were clear before the heat of the moment got the better of him.

“Any chance I’m being set up for disappointment?” I asked as he stripped off my shorts. With a body like his, I hoped not. All my illusions would have been shattered if that were the case. Maybe it would have been better for me, in the long run.

“No chance.” He kissed me. The confidence was intoxicating.

I was opened up like I’d never been opened up before, treated to the sort of foreplay I hadn’t bothered to imagine. I actually begged to suck his dick before he fucked me. Something about him got utterly dark for moments at a time; there were little glimmers of divine dominance that made my cock twitch and my ass clench. Like when he combed his fingers through my hair and asked me if I’d ever taken anything as big as his cock, waiting until I shook my head before he muttered, “I could tell, the way you screamed the first time.”

And then he was tender, easing that monolith inside of me so that I felt every inch of it this time, commanding me to tell him to stop whenever I wanted. He gave me that security, and I wanted only to assure him I didn’t need it. “Deeper,” I growled, reaching back to grab the headboard with both hands.

Once seated Erwin was still for a long while, just letting me breathe hard beneath him, adjust to the feeling, contemplate the fact that it was everything I knew as long as it was inside me. I had no complaints. When he started to move he switched back to that dark intensity, thrusting so deep that it made my eyes water, just to feel it. I didn’t want to react, the first time we fucked on that hotel bed. I just closed my eyes and let them water down the sides of my face, opened my mouth and felt it. I was transported, I stopped shaking, I was strangely  _free._  

That was the baseline he established, cradling my hips in his with sharp, shallow thrusts until he told me, with concern that just barely crossed the line to become conviction: “I’m going to come inside of you.”

“Nnnn!” Was all I could manage, mindless as I was.

“Should I pull out?”

I thrashed my head back and forth to say no, as his cock kept glancing off my prostate with every other thrust or so.

He came with a throaty moan and stayed inside of me, stirring me up with little circles of his hips while I swallowed to catch my breath, feeling forever on the edge of ecstasy. He sucked me to my orgasm immediately after pulling out, thrusting his fingers deep inside to search for my sweet spot while he did. Erwin, with his hair still tousled from sleep, milked the last drops from my cock with his hand and stared down at me to say I looked like “some dark religious vision.”

“Right back at you,” I replied weakly, and he smiled in a soft way that did not at all match the way he’d just absolutely wrecked my ass.

Deep in my gut, I have a little place that tends to itch when I know I’m reading a situation incorrectly. I think maybe sometimes I have a sixth sense, and whatever that sense is it was fluttering around in my stomach when he asked me if I wanted a cigarette.

“Yeah,” I said, and thought  _this is it, then. The ceremonial smoke after sex. Back to the real world, after this._  “You smoke?”

But the sixth sense was telling me that I was wrong, that this was just the beginning. “Bad habit I picked up in college,” he confessed. “I’m not that bad about it, though. Maybe a pack a week?”

“Yeah, that’s not bad,” I answered, and he lit my cigarette first before touching the tip of his to mine and borrowing the light in a different sort of kiss.              

The sixth sense was right. We talked about college. I opened up the first of many doors, telling him all about my academic history. I couldn’t keep my hands off his body, because when it comes down to it I’m touchy about things that capture my interest. I want to memorize them by feelings, because somehow I know that other memories can betray me. We kissed occasionally, between stretches of discussion, and then we kissed and we didn’t stop.

The sun set and the sun rose, and for the most part we didn’t even notice. He ordered room service, and I confessed I’d never experienced room service before. We got drunk off overpriced wine and traded backrubs (his was better than mine, but I countered that I bet my blowjob was the best he’d ever had and he couldn’t really argue with that).

Three days in. I’d told him about my teen years, about finding the alleys and my first bathhouse and the comfort of anonymous sex. He’d still told me little about himself, but I was still being selfish. I felt important, I felt like the whole thing was a movie and as long as my story was compelling I’d still be the star. He couldn’t turn me off. That went without saying.

“Can you sing?” He asked at one point. I forget which day it was. I’d been humming. I’d slept for a very long time, and he’d let me. I was coming down at last. I felt normal. It felt odd. I was terrified to leave the hotel room but I was willing to do anything to stay there.

“I actually can,” I said, trying to sound flip about it.

“Can I convince you to sing for me? Do you ever do that for anyone?”

“Second question: no.” I looked right at him and answered. He kissed me and rolled me on top of him, where I’d found my favorite position over the course of the week. We weren’t ready, though. The fucking was happening in very organic waves of necessity, catch and release.

He wouldn’t say another word. He just let me straddle him there, and my nerves rolled and boiled, my selfishness clashed with my self-consciousness, I sighed and shook my head. He didn’t change the subject, but he didn’t press it either.

Finally I wet my lips, cleared my throat, and unsteadily started to sing ‘Can’t Stay Away From You.’ His silence helped me convince myself that I was alone, and my confidence peaked near the middle of the song. I finished it, and finally looked back at him.

“You’ve got a beautiful singing voice,” he said, a little sad as he put a hand on my hip, and at the time I had no idea what that tone of voice was for. I was too drunk on the compliment.

“Thanks.”

“Does that song remind you of anything in particular?”

“Nah,” I shrugged. “I just like it.”

Define ‘irony’.

 

 


	2. Ymir and Christa Meet

“I’d really appreciate it if you focused more on your anatomy. I’m not saying it’s not good, but… the assignment was for a life drawing, and this is honestly more…  _cartoony_.”

 _It’s supposed to be cartoony, you bag of fartgas,_ Ymir thought, just nodding as Mr. Pixis went on to critique her lack of value. She bit her tongue on also informing him that it was a tribute to Alphonse Mucha, who didn’t use much value to begin.

He said that a B seemed generous considering how she’d “misinterpreted the assignment, possibly on purpose,” but he still gave it to her because Ymir was the best artist in the class and everyone knew it.

“Thanks,  _Dot,”_  she flipped a salute from her head before taking the large sheet of watercolor paper to her desk. Someday she’d get in trouble for being a sarcastic brat, but today was not the day. It was better than the last logo the band had, certainly. Dazz would probably have a problem with it, just because he wanted to go full grunge, but as long as Jean was on her side it was going on the fliers for the next gig.

She left the painting on her desk and flipped open her sketchbook with the tip of her pencil, making a few notes for lyrics on the same page with facial expression studies for the band’s mascot. Half Tank Girl, half Mucha girl, and Ymir wanted to turn her into the heroine for her comic book whether or not the band took off.

“Oh, wow.” Someone paused behind her desk, and Ymir smiled faintly at the sound of an incoming compliment. “That’s really good.”

She turned slightly in her chair, expecting one of the girls that talked shit about her for wearing flannels and Doc Martens every day, suddenly unable to resist a kind word once they found out she drew.

Instead, she lost her breath for just a moment and felt immediately hot behind the ears. She looked from the page and back to the owner of the voice, wondering what had just happened. “Thank you!” Ymir finally stammered, and blinked a few times to clear her head. “I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve not seen you in class before?”

“Oh, I sit in the back! I’m new. I got here a week after school started, so…” The girl laughed nervously and bowed slightly to the side, suggesting that even if she had been noticed she might have ducked the attention.

Hoping for the best, Ymir flicked her wrist at the empty seat next to her desk. The girl slipped easily into it, sideways between the chair back and the metal rod that attached it to the desk. “I’m Christa,” she introduced herself, hugging an artboard to her chest.

“I’m Ymir.” Her hand swallowed Christa’s completely when they shook, like their meeting was a business transaction. Christa laughed nervously again, and wiggled to the edge of the chair to peer closer at the painting on the other girl’s desk.

“Seriously, I love that.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s that say on the bottom?”

The closer she leaned, the more inescapable became the fact that she smelled like Pear Glace. Ymir tried to keep her mind on track while she pulled the paper over so she could get a closer look. “ _Historia Rise_. That’s the name of my band. Well, it’s the name of  _her._  The character. But it’s also the name of my band.”

“You’re in a band?” Christa grinned and Ymir swallowed hard.

“Yeah!” She always spoke too loudly, too enthusiastically, when she was trying to flirt. At least none of her friends thought enough of art to also take the class. She’d never hear the end of it if they saw this. “You know, we’re still starting out, but we’re okay. I write most of the songs. I play bass.”

“Yeah?” Christa paused and they looked at each other. She was still grinning. “Like Kim Deal.”

Ymir’s eyes went wide at the fact that she knew who Kim Deal was. “Kim Deal is my role model.”

“Well, then, I would definitely be interested in coming to see your band.”

With a deep breath, reminding herself not to move too quickly, knock over her pencil case, be a spazz as usual, Ymir tore a corner off of the sheet in her sketch pad and nodded. “I can give you the info on our next gig, but you have to  _promise_ to come.”

Christa smirked adorably. “I promise. I’m looking for ways to spend time since I moved here.”

“Well, then,” another deep breath, “this is pretty much the only thing to do. So I win.”

_Did that sound too forward? Fuck me if that sounded too forward._

Christa plucked the paper with Ymir’s hasty, scratchy notes out of her fingers. “Thanks. You know,” she turned her attention back to the painting. “She looks like Alicia Silverstone.”

“I was going to say she looks like you.”

Christa looked at her and Ymir did not feel the need to mask the fact that she was staring. When Christa glanced away shyly, and bit her bottom lip in a bashful smile, a wave of relief ran through her. “Nah.”

“It’s true. The hair, the eyes. Even your eyebrows, a little. I was sort of shocked when you just appeared there because you sort of look like her.” Ymir chuckled and waved in the air, trying not to let her enthusiasm over the fact become too apparent.  _Or too gay._

“Well, she’s pretty.” Christa tucked her hair behind one ear and nodded critically at the picture, then let her eyes flick up to Ymir again. “So I’m flattered.”

They paused. Ymir was about to ask, to keep the conversation going more than anything, what Christa had painted for the assignment, and if Mr. Pixis had been kinder to her attempts. Instead, Christa spoke again. “Maybe I can be your model.”

Ymir could no nothing but let the tiniest edge of a nervous, ecstatic laugh squeak out of her throat. 


	3. Erwin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of really fucking necessary as a supplement to his character in 1994 so read it????

An old friend told me something about heartbreak, once. He said it should be easy to get over the worst heartbreak, because the worst of it comes from illusions. Things that aren’t real hurt us. Things we perceive only because we desperately want them to be there can actually cause us harm we feel in our hearts, and that’s not the way it should be. So you’ve got to think that, every time: this isn’t real. The way you used to be told monsters didn’t exist and there wasn’t one hiding under your bed, you’ve got to grow up and learn that sometimes good things are the same way.

He drank himself halfway to oblivion, of course, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t on to something.

I met her in college when she was a friend of a roommate’s friend coming to visit here and there throughout the year. We hit it off and I found out she had a crush on me, but I was already dating a little heartbreak named Patricia. When that ended badly I turned to friends, and she was still there to be one of them. “Maybe the stars put me in the wrong direction,” I told her while we were all sitting on the balcony one night, laughing. “Your names sound really close, after all. Maybe I was meant to be with you.” It had been a joke at the time.

Petra became my closest friend, and that was because of everything besides the fact that she was attracted to me. She denied it often, in fact. For seven years, she denied it, reneging on her earlier crush and claiming she’d grown beyond the ideal of a Ken doll. We went through shaky relationships with other people and loved each other because we weren’t  _in love_  with each other. The conversations we had and the time we spent were rarified; our kismet was unlike what I had with anyone else. The lack of pretense made it easy. The lack of pressure to impress one another made it safe. I can’t say why we were so close, and why everyone saw it. She was bold and spoke her mind, had a sharp and complex sense of humor, loved to take risks and go off on tiny adventures whenever the impulse arose. But even with that, she was  _careful_ , and in the best people impulse is always on equal footing with intelligence.

She got married early to an investment banker who had no idea how to treat her. She divorced him and joined the Navy. We didn’t talk for about two years, until we found each other again. Living in the same city, we had the same ritual at the same piano bar every Friday night, when she was off duty and I was off work. For months, our Fridays went that way, interrupted on only the most important occasions, never because of anything as trivial as a date with someone else. We’d drink and talk, and then go to one house or the other and watch movies and drink more. We joked about sleeping together and she always wrinkled her nose, and I acted like it was the furthest thing from my mind despite lavishing her with compliments whenever possible. Girlfriends were jealous of her. Boyfriends were jealous of me.

I was 32 and she was 28. Late one Friday night – she had to change out of her fatigues when she left the base, and so was in workout clothes – she stared at me sternly over the edge of her wine glass, and when I narrowed my eyes at her she blurted out: “We should get married.”

There was no long engagement, no announcement in the paper. There was only a semi-opulent wedding to appease my parents, who were overjoyed I’d chosen to settle down with the tiny, pretty girl who served our country as a career rather than a college loan of indentured servitude. They ignored, for the most part, the fact that Petra spent her time with crass sailors and wore flats with her wedding dress. She looked the part. I’d passed some unspoken checkpoint, and they were content to leave me alone for a year or two.

Contrary to how things may seem, or what people might assume of me, my experiences with women were never and are not entirely awful. Petra and I eased into lovemaking under the influence of years of friendship and a healthy maturity. I was comfortable with her and she proclaimed herself more than content with me. It doesn’t sound passionate because it wasn’t, particularly. We got each other off and had fun doing so. That was the end of it. We always found more bliss in the comfortable security of domestic life, and I fell graciously into the role of house husband while she commanded the larger paycheck and the best benefits the United States government could provide. It was suggested that I work on my thesis, move up to my doctorate from there. When my Master’s was secured, I decided to be a teacher instead.

I was happy because I wasn’t overwhelmed. Things were easy because they weren’t passionate and maddening and over-the-top. We had duties, we had plans, and we loved each other. Friendship, ascended. Simple as that.

I’d been given a hard time since college, when my personality and romantic choosiness meant I’d be read as gay by everyone from my closest friends to my own parents. Of course, that had never even been an option for me. Stereotypes were unkind to me, but the pieces didn’t fall together, whether due to shame or conditioning or some deeper psychological block. “Gay from the waist up,” Petra even chided me with a grin, and I wore that like a badge of honor some days. You can go through years rolling with the punches, I came to find.

Still a lowly history teacher without tenure at 34, with a wife deployed to Middle East for Desert Storm, I began to feel like Holden Caulfield after life caught up to all his whining. Whether gripped by fear of losing her or else bristling with an early mid-life crisis, I found solace at a bar that I didn’t know was a gay bar when I first walked in. Flirtations fed my ego. I knew no one. I had nothing to prove. I wasn’t interested in any woman but my wife, but the peril of undressing one’s own psyche is that the psyche can turn out to be an impulsive thing. Revelations don’t give you warning. I courted and kissed a bartender named Aaron. The next night I went back, and he gave me a blowjob in the bathroom. I was 34 and I fucked another man for the first time, and suddenly I knew with eyes wide open why everything had seemed slightly off-kilter my entire life.

I took two sick days from work and sat alone in a frightened, revelatory haze for most of it.

Deception is never easy, but the thing about deception to protect yourself is that you learn what works until it becomes just another part of your routine. “You could be bisexual,” a new friend told me when I unloaded my troubles on him. And I said, I don’t think so. I said that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here. Of course, it’s never as simple as that. Breaking it down into exactly what this and that means, why I had no problems or hesitations in bed with my wife, but why I wasn’t actually   _attracted_  to women, why all of the vanilla evolutions of boring heterosexual love were left far behind when I was alone with a man I desired. I’d become a different person, but the chances to be that person were limited. I was suddenly ravenous and reckless, a fool for what I found arousing. Beastly, in the right measure. Sex had become something new. Perhaps it had become what it was always meant to be. It had become thrilling, as I realized at last that the body of another man did things to and for my libido that I’d never dared give serious consideration before.

Becoming that person; becoming the person I wanted to be at last… it would mean losing too much. My security, my wife, possibly my family. I couldn’t do it, not just because of what felt right. Responsibility had already become a mantel I wore very well, and I wasn’t about to pull a disappearing act for the sake of something I’d kept from myself for decades. I’d been raised to see out the consequences of my decisions.

I never thought of cheating as cheating on  _her_ , and that was bullshit but I kept believing it, because it was just something I needed, a bad habit that didn’t encroach on the station she’d already taken. Hotels and bars and backseat blowjobs had no effect on who I cooked breakfast for in the morning, who I trusted with the feelings I showed literally no one else, whose home and bed I wanted to share because it felt  _comfortable_.

My dad, before he died, for all the questionable examples he set, told me something important about infidelity. “It may happen,” he told me. “You might do down that road, and what you have to do is not lose your respect for her. If you make bad decisions let them be for a thing, a feeling, a need, rather than a person. Because the minute you cheat and you get attached to another person, it’s over. You’re fucked.”

I met a little songbird with a broken wing and I made the mistake of nesting with him, and then I knew I had to make a decision.

I barely escaped, and being the person I am I’d still tried to leave a trail of parting gifts in my wake. I couldn’t stay away from him but I knew I had to. Mornings passed when his scent was clinging to shirts I hadn’t yet taken to the cleaners, and on those mornings there were moments I wished I was waking up in a different bed, but my decision had already been made.

The evening I left Levi’s apartment for the last time, still awash in uncomfortable and unconfident  revelations, I sat in my car in the driveway for several minutes before I ventured into the house. I put on the smile I always wore when I saw Petra on the sofa, still in her fatigue pants with a thin tank top above. She was taking up all three cushions, hands on her stomach and watching television peacefully.

“Hi,” she greeted me brightly.

“Hey there, lazy.”

“Not lazy, just tired.” She sat up when I entered the room, and rubbed at her eyes. “Have you eaten?”

“Not yet.” Despite knowing a trip to the kitchen was inevitable, I sat down on the couch next to her and pulled at my tie, trying to suppress the memory of having just put it back on. “Why so tired? Did you get to talk to Auruo today?”

“Yeah…” She sighed. “We agree that I should wait on going E-3 until next year.”

“That’s definitely wisest. Did he say how long you can be out?”

“Four months, if I want to be. At least, that’s pretty much the standard I can get away with before politics start getting brought up.”

I reached over and put a hand on her belly. She fell against my shoulder, nuzzling happily. “How do you feel about Hawaii?”

“Hawaii,” I repeated, nearly whispering.

“Hawaii.”

“Is that where you’ll--?” Would we be able to bring my car, was my shameful first thought beyond wondering whether it was actually her next station.

“I don’t know; I need to put together a list of my top choices. I like Hawaii.”

I nodded, and smiled. “Hawaii sounds good.” I didn’t ask about the car.

“San Francisco?”

“I’d…” I stopped myself when I thought too much about it. “I’d like California, I guess. Any option for somewhere more rustic?”

“You married a Navy girl, lumberjack,” she giggled and wrapped her arms around my waist as a delicate calm started to take me over. Calm, security. Was it love? Surely it was some strange sort of love. A good love, not a sick love barely surviving on pruning the rot. What kind of love I deserved, I wasn’t sure, but this was the closest I felt to happiness. “Not much wilderness where we’ll be going.”

I liked the way she put it like that. Being part of a ‘we’ meant more to me than most other things.

Looking down at her, I noticed that she was biting her bottom lip, smiling. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking, I guess we should look at schools and stuff in the areas, too. See what’s best for those opportunities.”

She didn’t mean for my career.

I’d returned from my supposed educators’ conference in New York, which was actually me returning from two weeks at a Marriot with Levi, and Petra gave me the news that she was pregnant. We had definitely not planned it. Life changed considerably after that particular conversation, in ways I couldn’t very well tell her. I tried to decide for nearly two months whether to tell Levi, but when every encounter ended in favors of either the financial or sexual variety, guilt began to eat away at me while I understood how much more devastating the truth would be, the longer I waited to tell it, the longer I worried about how much I’d started to care for him. I’d told him I was a coward, and I was absolutely truthful in that at least.

“Yeah,” I said, a genuine grin spreading across my face as I rubbed more thoughtfully on her gently rounded stomach. “That’s the best way to choose, I think. Any place is as good as any other, to me.”

She nodded as an excuse to rub her nose against my arm. Thank goodness I’d left my jacket in the car; she would have smelled another world entirely on the shirt below. I stroked her hair and her hands got tighter around me.

My heart started to beat faster because I was nervous. I always had been with her, especially lately, when she made obvious overtures. Lukewarm lovemaking, after learning what I was actually capable of, seemed like a joke. She accused me of being distant because I  _was_ , and even though I pleased her on a technical level she knew the heart wasn’t in it. I wondered if she could sense the untapped reservoirs she would never be able to open. She was intuitive like that, after all.

She’d see through the ruse someday, probably, but I didn’t want her to find out with a heartbreak. Pregnancy was a sign. It was the grandest, most elaborate sign throwing itself in my path to say I was going to be accountable. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to love her, and I wanted to be  _good_ for someone. Whatever I gave her, I wanted it to be real.

Even if it wasn’t the way it might have been, with a hundred different choices over the millions of moments in my lifetime, there was no denying that I had it too good to throw it away.

“You’re gonna be such a good daddy,” she said softly into my ear. I pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head, then her mouth, as I let that vote of confidence sink in. 

“We’re going to raise the hell out of this kid,” I joked softly, and she laughed. That diffused the potentially romantic moment, at least. If I let it go farther, the fact that I was firing blanks may have been cause for some suspicion. Levi had tapped me out completely. He always had. “Let me make dinner.”

“I didn’t go shopping,” she groaned. “Too tired after work.”

“I know we have cheese, I know we have bread. Grilled cheese for dinner.” I patted her leg as I stood up.

 She rolled onto her back and went right into taking up the entire length of the couch again as she punched the air and said, “Yay!”  


	4. (5) Days of Jean/Armin

i.

“There’s a message on your machine,” Armin said on Tuesday when Jean walked back into the room. It had been raining all day, and by the time they arrived at Jean’s place after school there was no way to deny the need for dry clothes. He was turning a freshly laundered shirt inside out while Armin looked on from a cocoon of blankets.

“A new one? Did someone call?” He slipped the shirt on and gave a pleasant sigh at the warmth on his skin.

“No, I just noticed there’s always one message on here. It’s just something that started to bug me recently.”

Jean’s face wavered but he decided at the last moment not to play dumb. It was a sterile feeling, deciding to admit something. “Yeah, about that…” He walked over to the answering machine where it sat on the table next to his bed. Armin’s eyes followed him closely, not about to stop staring so long as Jean was wearing nothing but a white t-shirt and a pair of briefs. “I was thinking about that yesterday.”

“Why? What is it?” Armin sat up and let the blanket slip off his bare shoulders. He’d cuddled up into the familiar bed naked, content to let his clothes tumble in the dryer until he absolutely  _had_ to put them back on. Hopefully not before more interesting activities prevailed, of course.

However, the look on Jean’s face didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength. Armin’s eyes sought out the surface of the bed, the wall, the television that wasn’t even turned on – anything to avoid looking right at him as he said, “It’s from Marco, isn’t it?”

Jean coughed on a laugh, breathless like the question had been a punch to the gut. “You know, you’re too smart. You scare me, you figure things out so easily. But that’s good. That’s good for me.”

Armin just looked back at him, blinking slowly.

Clutching his neck with both hands, Jean held his face between his arms and made a frustrated noise. “It’s just the last time he called me, before he left. Before we broke up. It’s no big deal, I haven’t even listened to it in weeks. Just—“

“It’s kind of a big deal to me,” Armin muttered, and clutched the blankets tighter, wishing suddenly that he’d kept his clothes on.

“I just don’t want to forget what his voice sounds like.”

“Why not?” Armin looked up, frowning slightly.

Jean seemed not to understand the question, his usually animated face blanking for a moment. “Why wouldn’t I? I want to remember things; memories are important to me.”

“But you two might talk again. You didn’t have a bad break up, right? That’s what you told me. But still,  _you broke up_.” Armin hadn’t meant to sound that way, but he felt vulnerable and he felt trapped and he felt powerless to convince Jean in any way that didn’t involve raising his voice.

In the resulting silence, he didn’t apologize. He didn’t feel like he had to. He let Jean walk uncomfortably to the edge of the bed and sit down next to him, and he didn’t shake his hand off when it reached out for his shoulder. “It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

Armin just nodded, and Jean started to nod with him. The somber look on his face was unprecedented, and he nodded a few more times to himself as he leaned over, queued up the message, and deleted it from the machine without another moment of protest.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” he slid closer to Armin, and leaned in to kiss his forehead. “I don’t just mean right now. Obviously not right now. I mean not for a long time. It’s been a month but I want you around much longer.”

ii.

Armin had always assumed, throughout middle school and his first couple of years at Shinganshina hearing about them, that the Sheds were something of an actual business, a sort of hangout for the cool kids. That everyone referred to them as “the Sheds” plural did little to sway his interpretation, until Jean introduced him to the reality. The Sheds were actually sheds; storage units rented out by a local alternative philanthropist who just wanted to give the young musicians in the area somewhere to meet and practice. Everyone knew stories about the Sheds, of course. More went on there than simple band practices, and Armin heard once that a guy got stabbed and bled out in the parking lot. Needless to say, he was never allowed to go there to hang out, even if the Sheds were within walking distance of his house on the edge of the Trost neighborhood class divide. That was until he met Jean. He figured that his grandfather didn’t need to know.

It would have been boring, probably, under any other circumstances. The music was categorically terrible for the most part, and even though the insulation was thick between spaces, noise from the other bands bled over. Jean’s band was a notch above terrible, but they were still vetting the drummer who had taken Marco’s place over the summer. His name was Franz. Armin didn’t feel like he would last long.

Again, it would have been boring under any other circumstances, but between the false starts and hurried stops, the arguments between Jean, Ymir, and the lead singer Armin didn’t know yet, he had plenty to keep himself occupied. Specifically, he spent his time staring at Jean as he played the guitar, fiddled with amps, wiped the sweat off his face and got into the music. The fact that he wore a particularly fitted tank top made it even better. By the time practice ended because Franz had a curfew (to everyone’s amusement), Armin was ready to do everything they hadn’t gotten around to the day before.

He resolved to give Jean a half an hour while the band had an impromptu meeting before he began to exhibit his restlessness to get home and get his pants off. It was bad enough sitting next to him, glancing over occasionally for a greedy eyeful of his upper arms, smelling him and realizing he didn’t entirely object to the smell of Jean’s sweat.

The first topic of conversation was the eminent departure of Franz. The lead singer (Dazz, he was introduced as; Armin had misgivings about that being his real name) claimed he was competent enough on the drums to take over. “Jean, you can sing.”

“You can sing?” Armin asked, face lighting up while Jean glanced over. 

“Uh, a little. Yeah.” He waved it off like the discussion, unlike most others about his talents, made him uncomfortable. It let Armin know he wasn’t lying. “We’ve talked about it before, me taking over for Dazz.”

Armin smiled proudly and considered his future as a groupie. 

The band name was then brought into question. They had booked a gig on the 24th, and had been considering a change. “His-to-ri-a Rise.” Jean counted out the syllables on his fingers. “It’s too long, people won’t want to say that. It’s cool but, historically – no pun intended – you can get away with four syllables, not five.”

“Well, just Historia makes us sound like we’re a metal band or something.” Ymir stopped examining the strings on her bass and leaned forward. She had come up with the name. She obviously didn’t want it to change.

“True.” Jean sighed.

Though unsure of whether it was his place, as a spectator, Armin spoke up. “What about Rise?”

Jean tilted his head thoughtfully. Ymir gave it two seconds before she shook her head. “There would be so many erection jokes. Not sure if I’m ready for that.”

“Well, spell it differently, then,” Armin shrugged, hoping the suggestion would be forgotten as soon as he said it.

“Eh?” That was Dazz.

“Like… maybe like the German spelling. R-e-i-s-s. I don’t know, that was dumb. Forget it.”

“That’s pronounced like ‘rice’ though,” Ymir made a convincingly sour face, but then her eyes scanned nothing in particular, like she was thinking it over. “I mean, it’s weird, though, because I like it.”

“I kind of like it, too,” Dazz admitted, sounding rather surprised by that fact.

They decided to use it for the gig, at the very least, and see how it worked.      

“Jean, I like your new boyfriend.” Ymir couldn’t have possibly known the tension it sparked in Armin when she said that.

He waited for Jean to refute it. Jean didn’t; he just smiled at Armin proudly and pulled him closer.

iii.

 “I will never think about the War of 1812 the same way again,” Jean mumbled into a pillow.

Armin grabbed the remote and chuckled, changing on instinct to MTV. They’d left a documentary on as nothing but background noise while they talked, and by the time Jean’s mouth was around Armin’s cock neither was prepared to lose even a moment to change it. “You’re telling me? That Donald Trump Pizza Hut commercial was on when I came.”    

“I did notice that,” Jean snorted before turning his head on the pillow. He’d rolled onto his stomach, leaving Armin the beautiful view of his bare back. Jean was collected and put together in the most unexpected moments; usually those moments involved the bedroom, his car, his domain. Armin knew he must have seemed far less casual, his shirt undone to the last button, his pants open, still dressed for the most part despite the unfortunate state of his hair. He checked it with his fingers for a moment or two while Jean watched, before he looked down at the other boy, lifted his eyebrows, and said, “Your turn.”

“Mmmm?” Jean’s mouth turned up in a slow, taunting smirk.

He was instructed to stay exactly where he was, and Armin guided him sweetly into position on his knees, sliding his pants off with an excruciatingly slow touch. He was hard again by the time Jean’s cock was starting to drip with pre-orgasmic tremors, and with a heavy sigh he leaned forward to press himself teasingly against his ass. 

After Jean came into his hand, Armin rode the friction in that position, and kissed the spot between Jean’s shoulders after leaving a mess on his back.

“Jesus Christ,” Jean repeated, panting, collapsing onto his stomach again. “Jesus, Armin.”

Exhausted, Armin fell next to him, and pushed close for a kiss. Their eyes met, and just when it seemed too comfortably intimate to be real, Jean whispered, “I can’t roll over now, you have to clean the jizz off my back first.”

Laughter forced their mouths apart, finally, and Armin held his forehead against Jean’s. “In a minute.”

Grinning, they played at holding hands as Jean wrapped one arm around Armin. “What is it? Your eyes are doing that thing. You have something to say.”

Armin nodded.

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

Jean paused. He looked stunned for a moment, and then he smiled. “Yeah. I think I love you too.”

“Do you really?”

His fingers wrapped around the back of Armin’s neck, holding him close. “Yeah. I really do.”

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

They were quiet, swallowing hard and basking in the reality of what they’d just admitted.

A nervous smile broke out on Jean’s face, and he began to vibrate with silent laughter until Armin asked what was the matter.

“Nothing, just… now that we’ve said the most important thing we’ll ever say to each other, can you clean me off?”

“Sorry!” Armin yelped, already bouncing off the bed in embarrassment. “Bad timing, I know! But I couldn’t wait!”

Jean had grown up in a house where manners dictated that you walk every guest to the door. His parents were watching TV in the next room while he said goodnight to Armin, as they usually were. That particular night, he stepped onto the veranda and pulled the door shut, hesitating before the cursory farewell kiss. “Hey, um…”

“Hm?” Armin tilted his head curiously.

“Just wondering if on Friday night you can… you know… if you want to spend the night.”

Elaboration wasn’t needed to read between the lines of the invitation. Armin’s breath went short for a moment, but he just smiled wider as he nodded. “I can. I mean… I do.”

“Yeah?” Jean seemed relieved, as if Armin would have said no.

“Yeah.” Both hands clasped in his, Armin stepped up and pressed his face close to Jean’s again. After a few seconds of nervous, and yet completely content, silence, they kissed.

“See you later,” Jean said, breathing the words against Armin’s lips.

“Later. I love you.”

“Yeah,” Jean gulped, and squeezed his hands. “I love you, too.”

iv.

“Is that… is that okay?”

Jean just moaned.

Though embarrassed by what seemed like a statement of the obvious, Armin was beyond caring if he seemed naïve. “You just feel so  _tight_ …I can’t tell.” He tried to put all of his excitement into that tone; breath was hard to come by. “Sure I’m not doing it too hard?”

Armin tried to catch his breath when Jean lifted both arms to reach back and grab the spaces between his bed’s slatted wooden headboard. Flushed in the face, hair stuck to his forehead, Jean smiled sexily and took a deep breath. “I was going to ask you to go harder.”

In the heat of the moment Armin threw out the sort of confessions that seemed ridiculous under normal circumstances. “Your arms are really hot. I love your arms.”

“Thanks,” Jean answered on a grunt, closing his eyes but holding his smile as Armin thrust in deeper. “Oh, god, yes, keep doing it like that.”

“Yeah?” One hand holding on to a thigh, the other on one of Jean’s hips, Armin repeated the move that had seemed too rough even when he went for it. Jean seemed more than content. Just a few more thrusts like that, and Armin reached a pinnacle where he knew he was right on the verge. It felt easy, Jean’s body fit his wonderfully, but there was no way to last when it felt so good. “God, I’m gonna--” He cut himself off on purpose and fell silent into concentration.

Jean chuckled darkly and squirmed a little on his pillow. He let go of the headboard with one hand and lifted it to reach for Armin, fingertips splaying on his chest. “Say you’re gonna come.”

“I’m gonna come.”

They looked at each other. Armin watched the way Jean’s breath caught subtly every time he thrust in, until he couldn’t keep looking and concentrating. When he closed his eyes, Jean reached down to touch his own cock while Armin pounded unsteadily, still not quite sure of his pacing, just eager to feel good and not make it awkward. “Fuck, Armin,” Jean whispered, though he hadn’t meant to really say anything.

Armin just choked into a moan and threw his weight into Jean, cresting and tumbling over the edge.     

v.

“How long was that?”

“Just 38 seconds.”

“Really? Oh my god that felt like forever.”

“Try again, try again.”

“Your watch is broken.”

“My  _dive watch_  is not broken.”

“Okay, okay. I’m going under. Call it.”

“3… 2… go!”

Armin sucked in a deep breath and dipped below the surface of the water. The lake was actually quite warm for the season, and noting that it was probably the last chance they would have to be in it before a cold snap passed through the area, they trudged out while the rest of the house was asleep. The moon had set and the pre-dawn night was black as pitch, but they made it to the water and waded in.

What was supposed to be a momentous occasion on Friday had been pushed up to Thursday, though it almost wasn’t that way. Armin was overwhelmed by the events of the day, and after everyone felt the need to  _talk_ about it for hours he finally fell into Jean’s lap when he came upstairs, found the feeling of his body agreeable, and tried to wrap himself inside of it until it was obvious that the time was right. However, robbed of the chance to fall asleep in Jean’s arms, he came back on Friday night regardless. They had every intention of taking the opportunity to wrap up in blankets and spoon for hours, but as it had been on Thursday night, plans went awry.

With a huge breath, Armin popped back out of the water, smoothing his hair out immediately.

“45 seconds!” Jean snickered.

“Okay, so we’ve determined that I can’t hold my breath for very long.”

“You do pretty well when your mouth—“

“Oh my god, Jean, don’t say it. You’re gross.”

Jean just shrugged, laughed, and dove beneath the water. Armin could tell in the faint starlight that he was swimming toward the floating dock about seven yards from shore.

Though shivering in the cool air, sure they would catch cold at the very least, they locked hands and laid side by side on the platform, feet still in the water. They studied the sky as it lightened, talking about everything, talking about nothing, talking about themselves.  

At one point, Jean yawned.

“Tired?” Armin whispered, putting a hand on Jean’s chest.

“I guess I finally am, yeah.” He turned his head and they looked at each other to laugh.

“Your hair gets all wavy when it’s wet,” Armin noted, wrinkling his nose with a smile.

“A little. That’s why there’s always gel in it, I hate it looking this way.”    

“You’re cute no matter,” Armin said it with almost somber sweetness, pushing his hand up through Jean’s hair and grinning.

“Thanks. You’re one to talk.”

The sun came up over the trees just enough to turn the sky a light white and blue while they stayed in lazy silence where they were. “You know…” Armin started after some time. “Nah, never mind. That’s lame.”

“Oh, nuh-uh, no way I’m going to let you get away with that. Tell me.” Jean sat up, taking the first baby steps to get back into the house, out of his swim trunks, and into bed with Armin.  

“Just… this is really special. I don’t know. These last few days, and now this. Just something about this, watching the sun come up on the lake with you. I’m going to remember it.”

“Yeah?” Jean yawned again and turned around, stretching.

“Yeah,” Armin couldn’t help yawning, because after all, yawns are contagious.

At that, Jean leaned over him and pressed his nose close. “You promise?”

“I promise I’ll remember it,” Armin said softly, biting his lip for a moment before they kissed.

“Good morning,” Jean whispered.

“That was cheesy.” A pause. “Good morning.”

“Let’s go inside.”

“Okay.”  


	5. Jean's Dream

“You seem really worked up about something. Is there anything I need to know about?” Maybe he’d meant it as a joke, but Jean was too distracted by his own vigilance to pay much mind. Besides, every time the Vice Principal tried to play it cool, it was obvious that he was trying to play it cool, and it just came across as dad-awkward, and that made Jean squirm even more than he had been a moment ago.

“Me? Nah! Nope. Thanks for the ride.”

He was still staring out of his window, watching the trees go by, holding his breath at every car that passed, wanting to slip further into the seat and hide at every red light. Why wasn’t his house closer? Why had his alternator gone out  _that day,_ of all days? It was a brand new Cherokee, and the dealership was sure to get a piece of his mind, if not his mother’s. Being on the Winter Formal committee meant that he’d at least been able to bum a ride, but that Mr. Smith was the only one still lagging behind once Jean figured out what was wrong… that was the problem.

“No problem. You’re in Maple Trace, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s just a few streets away from me. This isn’t a problem at all.”

It was all  _Eren’s_ fault, anyway. It always was. He was the one who had to get drunk and go off on a tirade last Saturday night, keeping everyone his captive audience. Well, everyone who cared to stay and hear it. Jean, Armin, and Reiner (interestingly enough) were the only ones who had. Ymir stayed for a minute or two, but wandered off in boredom once Eren started doing the  _Eren_ thing.

_“Oh, well that explains a lot about your behavior, shitlord.” That had been Armin, once Eren told the story._

_“Wait, wait, wait. Wait. The Vice Principal is gay?” Reiner asked, like the answer meant life or death for him._

_Eren shrugged and made a wilting, keening, drunken sound of confusion. “I mean he banged my boyfriend like, a billion times apparently, so yeah I think that might count.”_

_“He’s married!” Jean countered, ever the contentious one._

_“Yeah, shitlord, I know!”_

_“Don’t steal Armin’s insults! So you’re saying he cheated on his wife with Tirne des Ailes? You’re a fucking jerk, Eren, that’s shit you don’t joke about!”_

_“His name is Levi, and would I joke about that?” Eren’s voice was rising, and he was pointing hard at his own chest. Jean started to regret his outburst, his accusation. Being a foil to Eren was 50% frustration and 50% backing off when he struck a nerve. “It nearly broke us up, don’t you call me a liar!”_

_“I didn’t call you a liar, I just called you a jerk.”_

_“Fine, chode-munch. Just… listen, I had to tell someone and now I’ve told all of you, so since you know the delicate nature of the fucking situation can you please be fucking discreet about it?”_

_Everyone nodded, and Eren sighed deeply, exhibiting slight relief that he’d gotten it off his chest.  Uncomfortable silence and fidgeting went on for a few moments._

_“You swear a lot more now,” Armin pointed out. The silence kept going otherwise._

_Reiner broke the ice. “Okay, am I the first one who’s going to point out that the Vice Principal is fine as hell?”_

_Jean tittered with laughter. Armin hid his face. Eren just sneered. “You’re the first, yes.” Jean paused, though, and glanced over at Armin. “Armin, please don’t be mad at me, but Mr. Smith looks sort of like a grown up you. I’d tap that, too.”_

_Armin just shrugged. “And I wanna do Jason Priestly, doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen. I’m not mad.”_

_Reiner seemed lost in contemplation, perhaps coming to terms with more than the others would ever be privy to. “Seriously, I’d ride that into the sunset now that I know this information.”_

_“Don’t be too eager about that, he’s got like a nine inch cock or something.” Eren said it off-handedly, like it was meant to trash talk, but Jean nearly choked on his beer. Armin patted him on the back as he doubled over to recover, and pointed around in confusion._

_“I’m sorry. Are we… are we talking about our Vice Principal’s dick right now?”_

_“Yes, we are,” Reiner said very importantly._

_“Shut up, Reiner.” Jean couldn’t tell who that was until he came up for air, coughed, and waved his hands._

_“Okay!” He broke it up. “Maybe we um… maybe we need to move on to another topic.”_

_“This is surprisingly interesting, actually,” Armin mumbled, still massaging Jean’s back even though he was well past choking._

_Jean just pouted at him and tried to be quiet about what he said next. “I mean, your dick’s pretty impressive, should we talk about that, too?”_

_Armin just slapped the back of his head, but thanked him much later. With his dick._

_“Oh my god, but have you seen how he’s built? Eren, thank you. For this information, thank you.” Reiner was still nodding in cheerful consideration._

_Jean just wanted to get off the topic. Jean just wanted to get off, though, also. “Yeah, thanks for all the awkward sex thoughts about a school administrator, Eren, you’re a true hero!”_

Three days later Jean was unable to think of much else, shoved as far toward the window on the passenger seat in Erwin’s Supra as he could get away with and not seem overtly awkward. The fact that it was the vehicle equivalent of a hot piece of ass, too…  _How dare you, Erwin Smith? How even dare you?_

“Yeah, once you take the turn at the entrance on Maple Trace itself, it’s about three roads in on the left, and— Wait, where are you going?”

“Just remembered something, it’ll only take a moment.”

Erwin pulled off the road and into a small parking lot for what appeared to be a hiking trail that was currently closed. Ensconced by trees and a large ridge, Jean hadn’t even noticed it until that day. Living only a few minutes away, that seemed odd. Then again, everything seemed odd.

Vice Principal Erwin Smith’s hand suddenly moving over to touch his leg seemed odd. The fact that Jean didn’t immediately shift away was unimportant. Jean was, in fact, intense in his determination to  _not mind_ that Erwin was touching him, so whether or not things seemed odd became suddenly moot.

“You can be honest with me,” Erwin started, and his voice seemed to reach out and curl around Jean, comforting but also a little bit dangerous. Every bit of dad-awkwardness was suddenly gone – very, very gone. “If there’s something you want to say.”

His honesty had gotten him in worse situations, Jean figured. After a deep breath, he finally just went for it. “Are you gay, sir?”

“You are, aren’t you, Jean?” Erwin’s hand tightened on his leg, sliding up. The heavy breath that fell from Jean’s mouth couldn’t be helped. The fingers practically wrapped around his thigh, larger and more powerful than any hand that had ever touched him In that way.

“That’s not an answer to my question,” he countered breathlessly.

“What do you think?” Erwin’s lips fell hot on the side of his face before he knew what to say. Jean’s legs opened instinctively and he turned into the attention to find blue eyes looking back at him. “I’m just sorry that this is the only way I could come up with, to approach you.”

“Wh… what?” Jean leaned away only slightly. He realized that he didn’t really  _want_ to lean away, though, and that’s when Erwin took his seat belt off.

“I’ve seen you around school, of course. I find you very attractive.” His other hand pushed at the small of Jean’s back and Jean lifted to let it encircle him. He was still denying the words that had been spoken, plain as day. Maybe there was another intention. Maybe he was confused. “I’ve wanted to get a handful of that ass since I saw it.”

No, he was definitely not confused. One fingernail was moving artfully and determinedly over Jean’s nipple as Erwin breathed into his ear. His breath was fresh. He smelled like faint autumn sweat and expensive cologne. He smelled a little like sex. Jean let go of a shaky, half-formed noise, and the words just kept coming. His ear must have been bright red.

Erwin’s hand still hadn’t moved further on his thigh, and Jean called upon all his willpower to keep his hips from bucking where they were.

“You’ve had boyfriends, I know. I’ve seen you flaunting them. How well do they do their job, though? How hard and long and often do you get fucked? Do you want a man to show you what the boys can’t?”

Jean whimpered. “Here?”

Finally, he felt the heat and strength of Erwin’s hand slide in to cup his crotch. “Yes, of course here.”

He didn’t even notice his seatbelt being unfastened, and bit his knuckle to hold back what would probably be an unattractive moan as the Vice Principal opened his zipper and reached in for his cock. The other hand glided up to stroke his cheek, though, and Jean could no longer withhold the urge to look Erwin in the eyes again. He looked so  _sure_ of himself, so in control. Jean tried to look like that when he was alone with Armin, or at least he hoped he even came near it. “I was going to tell you to calm down, but you’re actually sexier like this.” He had pretty eyelashes, was the last thing Jean noticed before Erwin started to stroke him.

“Well, you’ve got a wet dick, don’t you?” He asked in amusement, swiping his thumb through the precome at Jean’s slit and spreading it around the head of his cock. Jean only whined in response. He was like a stuck faucet under the right conditions, but he’d always thought most guys were like that. Even Armin had remarked on it, though. Maybe it was an unusual thing, after all. “That’s really hot. What if I said I wanted to taste it? Could I?”

His hand felt so good, but Jean couldn’t help wondering whether it paled in comparison to his mouth. Even the thought of it was so overwhelming that Jean almost shook his head at first, but caught himself just in time to screw his eyes shut and nod.

Both hands clamped over his mouth and Jean moaned into them as Erwin shifted and leaned over the center console. Jean was used to a blond head descending on his lap, but certainly not this one, and certainly not in this situation. All he could think to do was close his eyes and enjoy the feeling of Erwin’s tongue deftly circling the tip of his dick before his lips slid over the head and sucked hard enough on it that his sharp cry couldn’t even be muffled by his hands. Usually he could draw out his orgasm, but the way Erwin was working over his cock was pulling him quickly, dangerously close to the edge. He reached down with one hand, fisting the other on his lips, gasping out as he slid his hand into Erwin’s hair and attempted to pull him off.

He wasn’t very firm about it, however. It had only been a warning gesture, after all. A courtesy. Nevertheless, the firm seal of Erwin’s mouth slipped away, replaced just as quickly again by the strength and sureness of his hand. Drawing up to lean closer again, Erwin kissed the corner of his eye and the corner of his mouth, whispering roughly as Jean panted. “If we could afford the risk of being anywhere but in this car I’d spread you out naked on the bed and take it inch by inch, inside and out, I’d suck you off and eat your ass out before I rolled you over and told you to ride me so I could watch you bouncing while you screamed for my cock.” His teeth tugged at Jean’s earlobe just enough, and Jean’s hips canted into his grip.

Erwin slowed his stroke. He was watching Jean’s face, waiting until he glanced over pleadingly. “Don’t come yet. I won’t tolerate you getting spunk on my upholstery.” With that, he descended once more. Jean gasped and bent in only a handful of moments later, folding over Erwin with an unchecked yell of excitement as he came. One hand shot out to hold his weight against the dashboard, until he was fairly certain that he wasn’t going anywhere. Even though his head was spinning, even though his body felt weightless, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Not one trace of hot come escaped Erwin’s mouth, and with a few lashes of his tongue and gentle, coaxing sucks, he made sure there was absolutely nothing left for all of Jean’s quivering and whimpering. The rolling moans ebbed off, finally, and the boy leaned back to look down.

Erwin’s hair had been tousled by Jean’s hand, not to mention the intensity of his work; he opened his mouth imperiously to let the half-hard cock slide out from between his lips, watching the way Jean twitched between looking him in the eyes and gaping at the spectacle. The Vice Principal was holding his spent cock, cleaning it meticulously with a few luxurious licks to the underside, and didn’t look away from his face the entire time.

That was it, he assumed. Erwin sat up with what Jean read as a recovery sigh, and cleared his throat quickly. He settled back into his seat. Still feeling too sensitive to push his cock back into his pants immediately, Jean sat there in awkward silence, heartbeat still racing, blood only just starting to reroute to his brain again.

He could feel the tension swell, the moment predicting itself before Erwin’s voice cut the silence. “You want to see it, of course.”

He froze, held his breath, and looked over. “Wh-what?” With no idea what to say or do, but just the perfect lack of willpower or foresight, Jean let his eyes glance quickly at the Vice Principal’s crotch before he realized with a sudden rush of humiliation what he’d done. Erwin quirked one eyebrow, just subtly enough that it took Jean’s breath away all over again.  _Jesus Christ, do you have to be so attractive? How_ dare  _you?_

“I know you’ve heard about me and I know you’ve been thinking about me while you’re fingerfucking yourself. You never expect it or want it to happen, but it happens.”  _Wait, how could he possibly know that?_  “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the real thing. Besides… it’s your turn to make me come.”

Jean held his breath as Erwin flipped his tie over one shoulder and gave him a sensuous smile, reaching down to pull apart his leather belt. Feeling no shame in looking, although it was still a bit of a hazy state to be in, Jean finally noticed the obvious bulge in the older man’s lap, pulling at the fabric of his grey trousers, striking a breathtaking relief beneath.

He swallowed when he realized his mouth was watering, and held himself back from reaching out when Erwin started to pull the zipper down. He was met with a curious expression when he looked back up to see the Vice Principal’s face. “You’re being quiet, suddenly.”

“I don’t want to fuck this up,” Jean breathed, unsure of why that voice made him feel at ease after all it had already said. “And I can’t believe it’s happening.”

“Why, because I want to fuck you in my car? Or is It just because of who I am?”

That first part, that’s what made Jean go stupid again. Well, that and the fact that Erwin had pulled out his cock, and indeed, he wasn’t disappointed. “…Mr. Smith?”

“Get on your knees in the seat, Jean, and suck me.”

When he shifted into the position, grateful for his slim frame for the first time in ages, Jean wondered why he’d been asked to be in the seat. When he bent over, awkwardly bracing himself against Erwin to avoid falling right into him, though, he understood. One hand snaked over from the opposite seat and reached right down the back of his pants, and Erwin caught him at his weakness when he started to rub insistently against his asshole.

“Go on,” he urged Jean darkly.

Jean was hesitant. Not only was he grinding back into Erwin’s insistent touch, but he didn’t quite know what to do with what was in front of him. It was massive, living up to Eren’s comment, but Eren hadn’t prepared him for the girth of it, the symmetry of it, the tempting mushroom head and the perfect hint of blond curls at the base. Of course he’d grown rather fond of blond pubes, recently, not that anything else about Erwin was reminiscent of Armin, who was modestly endowedby comparison.

Still, he’d been given an order, and something about being instructed by  _that voice_ to do something gave Jean all the courage he needed to actually do it.

Erwin sucked in a slow breath of pleasure when Jean’s lips slid over the tip of his cock, going far enough to test how the size of it stretched his mouth. The taste of precome caught him off-guard, but it made him focus as Erwin screwed the tip of a finger into his ass.

“That’s good. When you moan around me,” Erwin mentioned, and Jean breathed out hard through his nose. “How bad do you want this, Jean? How bad does your pretty ass want this monster cock inside it right now?” At hearing his name, Jean bucked firmly. The combined stimulation was making his eyes water, and he moaned again to imagine being fucked by someone who spoke so calmly, so sensually, so  _confidently_ … and with a dick like that… “I’ll bet you’re a fantastic little fuck so why don’t you get those pants off and crawl into my lap right now?”

Jean pulled away in surprise, a trail of saliva holding on and breaking when he met Erwin’s heavy gaze. Around that time, just before he got his pants off maybe and  _definitely_ before he got fucked, Jean woke up.

He woke up in a haze of confusion, with the sheets half kicked off of the bed and a sheen of sweat on his body. He stared up at the ceiling fan’s whirring blades and knew it had been one of his rare but unfailingly embarrassing wet dreams before he even checked his boxer shorts just to make sure. The fact that he remembered it, so vividly in both images and words, made him stew in silent contemplation for several minutes before he realized that it was only 5:00a.m.

Armin didn’t make particular mention of how strange Jean seemed that morning, nor how jumpy he was as they made their way across campus to Biology. He kept his eyes on his feet, for the most part, even during conversation. He could tell that Jean hadn’t gotten much sleep, at the very least.

During a lull, once they were in the science building, Armin waved to the first person he saw just to break the tension. “Good morning, Mr. Smith!”

Jean looked up icily, eyes flush with mortification, and hissed at Armin. “Oh my god, don’t say hi to him.”

“Why does everyone always stop me from talking to him? God!” Armin cried when they were nearer to the classroom door.

“Just please don’t. Not today, please.”

“Is this because of what Eren told us about—“

“I will literally do anything you want me to do, if you’ll stop right now.” Jean said importantly, holding up his hands clasped in prayer.

Armin arched an eyebrow, taking that as a victory.

The move reminded Jean of someone else, but he didn’t say so. He just sat down as quickly as possible before words became superfluous.

 

 

 

 


	6. Ymir/Christa Intensifies

“You put these all on a tape together on purpose, didn’t you?”

Christa was finally wise to the situation. Ymir shrugged anyway, as “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” started playing once “The Sweater Song” ended.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“These are all the songs we sing together! These are all my favorite songs!” Christa laughed and shoved her arm playfully. Not too hard; Ymir was driving, after all.

“You got me, Detective.”

“Excuse me, I am a U.S. Marshal.” Christa’s favorite movie was The Fugitive. They watched it at her house anytime they couldn’t find anything else to do. Usually they still ended up talking, drawing in their sketchbooks, and ignoring most of the movie. Christa, however, loved any of the parts with Tommy Lee Jones. Ymir had noticed the way her head popped up to watch the screen whenever he appeared on it. Ymir couldn’t help being jealous.

“Ooohhh, fine. U.S. Marshal.”

“I still think that should be your Halloween costume.”

“I thought we were going as Forrest and Jenny!” Ymir had been looking forward to the plan; the disappointment in her tone was obvious.

“I don’t want you to cut your hair that short…” Christa said softly, adjusting her skirt. “And I don’t know, I’m still iffy on whether people would know I’m Jenny.”

“How would people know I’m U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard? My hair would still be short!”

“You’d have a badge. It would say—“

“Okay, forget it, I get it now. Never mind. Why don’t we just do Disney?”

Christa lit up at that. She loved Disney. She wanted to be an animator, in fact. She would often talk about how she would never be good enough for the job, but Ymir was determined to boost her confidence on that subject. “Oh my god, yes! I could be Belle! My mom can make the dresses, no problem!” She paused. “I thought you didn’t want to dress up like a princess, though.”

All this time, and Christa still just assumed Ymir was a tomboy. It was Ymir’s own fault, for playing into that misconception. The possibility that Christa would be frightened off by the truth was too much to risk.

“Naaahh, I mean, I could do Ursula!” When Ymir said it, Christa immediately started laughing. “Or The Beast.”

“Quiet, you would not.”

“I could be Gaston!”

Christa paused and contemplated this, staring at Ymir with a suddenly enchanted look, imagination running wild behind her eyes. “Oh my god, that’s a really good idea.”

“Let’s do it, then! I can run around all night begging you to marry me.”

“You do that already!” Christa reached under the neck of her sweater to adjust a bra strap, and laughed.

Christa’s family had just moved into a nice split-level house on the north end of town. It was quite a drive for Ymir but she was happy to make it often, especially since the forests and lakes that surrounded the property were great to set off into for long walks, letting them simply talk and indulge all the stupid in-jokes they’d cultivated in the few months they’d known each other. Mrs. Renz poked her head out from the kitchen when Ymir entered. “Oh, it’s my other daughter!”

“Hey, other mom.”

“I’m making a kettle of tea, if you want some.”

Ymir rarely found anyone who made sweet tea as good as Christa’s mom. It wasn’t hard to find in the area, but it was hard to find it done well. Ymir came from a long line of Slavs and Scandinavians, and most of her roots were in the Great Lakes area. They didn’t “do” sugar in their tea there. However, she’d gotten hooked on sweet tea visiting her cousin Rich in Tennessee during her childhood. She’d never stopped trying to find the same flavor.

“I am definitely going to drink half of that kettle, at least. You are god.”

The Renzes had moved to Trost  _from_ Tennessee, happily enough.

Mrs. Renz laughed happily and Christa ran into the small kitchen, grabbing couple of Hostess cupcakes from a box. “Did you girls have fun at the mall?”

“Yeah!” Christa pecked her mom on the cheek as she hurried back out, snacks in hand. “We’re gonna watch Next Generation, let us know when the tea’s ready!”

“I will.”

The fact that Christa had a television set in her room was a source of endless happiness to Ymir, who didn’t like to be around families when she didn’t have to be. Even though she got along with Christa’s parents, she was acutely aware at all times that they were under several assumptions about her that just weren’t true. Two of them were pretty big assumptions: first, that she was a God-fearing, church-going girl. Second, that she was straight. At the risk of not being able to see Christa anymore, she kept quiet on everything.

It turned out to be a rerun of the episode where the Enterprise blew up after every commercial. They’d seen it before, so Ymir pulled her sketchbook out of her backpack and started to look through her most recent work. Christa took the cue to do the same.

Feeling inferior to Christa as an artist was actually fine by Ymir. Being friends with her was enough. Getting to see her rough drafts and being asked for advice was a thrill. Constantly telling Christa she was going to be famous, offering to focus on inking so Christa could just focus on the line art, being willing to change the plotline of her comic’s script so Christa might want to collaborate on it… all of that was willing sacrifice, all of that was friendship and a little bit more.

“Do you have a magazine?” Ymir asked, turning this way and that, finding none of the clutter where it usually was. “You cleaned your room.”

“Yeah, mom made me,” Christa laughed, and reached over to a row of plastic drawers. “What do you want? I’ve got Delia’s catalogs and some issues of Vogue.”

They worked from magazines and clothing catalogs. Christa was better at clothing folds and facial expressions, but Ymir was better at anatomy. Either way, the references always helped, especially when they were bored. “Eh, I sort of wanted to draw her in something sexy.”

 _Her_ was always Historia Rise. Ymir rarely drew anyone else, even though the book had at least seven other characters that needed some love.

“Really? Like a bikini?”

“Do you have any Victoria’s Secret catalogs?”

Christa answered without hesitation. “Yeah, totally.” She reached under the first few catalogs and pulled out one with Tyra Banks on the cover.

“Cool. Thanks.”

After a minute or two of silent sketching, Christa kept glancing over as Ymir flipped through the pages. “They’ve got a new model,” she said. “I really like her.”

“Yeah?” Ymir allowed Christa to reach in and turn through a few pages, until she found the model.

“That’s her.” She was sporty looking, Ymir noticed immediately, with dark hair and lighter eyes that jumped off of her deep complexion. Maybe she was mixed race; her complexion and bone structure suggested it. “She’s got muscles. I love seeing that.”

“Really? You like muscles?”

“Oh, god yes I like muscles. Women with muscles are  _hot_.”

It was the first time Christa had really said anything like that. Ymir made her laughter inward and stared at the model instead. She tried to find the right thing to say, that wouldn’t be so overt. A test, maybe. “I like her legs more. She’s got a cute butt.”

“See, I’m not really into butts. I mean, mine’s big so that sounds like I’m putting myself down, but--”

“You do  _not_ have a big butt! You’ve got a cute butt, too!” Ymir couldn’t hold it back and let the catalog fall into her lap.

“Thank you!” Christa giggled, and pushed her hair behind her ear. She did that so often. Ymir loved it. “No, I just meant… I guess I don’t like girls that look all girly? Like, she’s not as busty as the other girls too. That’s really attractive to me.”

“You like girls who look like men, then.”

“No!” Christa grabbed for the magazine, but Ymir held it away. “No! I just like girls who are a little boyish, you know. Like you, you’ve got that style.”

Shyness and shock filled Ymir up to the brim, and all she could manage as a counterpoint was: “I wouldn’t have thought that. That you like it.”

“Really?” Christa scrunched up her nose and tossed her hair to one side, seeming giddy but surprised. They both laughed for a few moments.

Ymir decided to add something else. Just to protect herself. Just because her heart was beating a mile a minute. “I mean, like… that you like girls at all.”

“I love girls!” Christa spoke up. But there was  _wording_ to take into consideration. She didn’t mean the same thing that Ymir meant. “They’re so pretty. I’d much rather look at girls and draw girls than look at guys and draw guys. I mean, some guys are hot, you know, but they’re all  _guys_ , they’re all the same. I think girls are more…”

She searched for a word. Ymir filled in the blank for her. “Aesthetically pleasing.”

“Yes!” Christa snapped in the air.   

They talked about the book, Ymir drafted up a few half-imagined scenes for the script, and finally finished her picture of Historia in a pair of boy shorts, holding one arm over her breasts. “Oh my god,” Christa said as she re-entered the room from brushing her teeth. Ymir had her back turned, changing into the shirt she was going to sleep in. “This is so freakin’ hot!”

“Yeah? I like the look on her face.”

“The way she’s smirking and the hair sorta hanging over one eye? That’s really cool. Oh my god, this could be a cover!” She turned the sketchbook around and showed it to Ymir again.

“Haha,” Ymir laughed nervously. “I don’t know, I don’t want to sex her up too much. I want girls to buy our book.” She called it  _our book_  now. “Not just horny boys, you know?”

“But what about lesbians?” Christa whined. At that, Ymir barked a laugh. Hearing that word from Christa was a shot right to the heart. She half-expected some sort of righteous condemnation to come next. “Lesbians will love Historia! And then we can go to comic book conventions and people with think we’re a couple, and even more lesbians will buy the book!”

Ymir just played into it. “Especially since you’re Historia.” Christa just grinned vainly. “Can I call you baby, then? If we’re pretending, you know.”

“Ew, I hate that. Call me darling.”

“Okay, darling!” Ymir spun around in front of the trundle bed and fell into it, making Christa bounce where she was sitting on the edge.

Once the lights were out, they knew it was time to talk about things their facial expressions wouldn’t betray them to discuss. Just Ymir’s heels hung over the edge of the trundle for Christa’s day bed, and were it not for the small gap they could afford to put between the two mattresses to keep enough space to walk on the floor, they’d be in the same bed. Even though they didn’t need to, they whispered.

“Christa…”

“Uh-huh?”

“I’m really glad I met you.”

Christa paused, giving the moment what it deserved as Ymir hoped she was only just stalling to think of what to say. “Thank you. I really think the same.”

“I know I’m a bitch sometimes.”

“You’re not,” Christa said strongly, but not too strongly. “Anyone who thinks that way can shut up and answer to me. You’re not. You’re just smart.”

“I’m weird.”

“It’s good to be weird, though,” Christa replied. “I don’t like normal people. Even though I guess I’m pretty normal. That’s not the point. I wish I was as confident as you.”

The signals had mixed in her mind for too long. It was too much to hold it in. Every time she was around her, Ymir wasn’t sure whether she was reading what she  _wanted_ into everything Christa said and did, or whether big glaring hints were being thrown at her. She had to know. She had to just say it. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Christa’s voice dropped slightly, to a more clandestine whisper. “Okay.”

“Well, it’s not really a secret, but—“ She paused. She considered saying nothing more. She did anyway. “Um, I like girls.”

“Well, I sort of figured.”

It had taken so much nerve to admit it, so what sounded like a dismissal hurt slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve just heard people talking about you and they mention it, just sort of off-handedly, like you’re probably a lesbian and stuff.”

“What, do they say it mean?” Ymir sat up slightly. That hurt even more. People talking about her. It wasn’t what she wanted to think about.

“No, not really! Just like it’s a fact, you know. Like  _oh, Ymir’s a total lez,_ stuff like that. They still think you’re cool!” It didn’t really matter, but Ymir didn’t care to say as much to Christa. This wasn’t about that. “But, I mean… I wanted to hear you say it. I never wanted to assume. I mean, you like Harrison Ford and—“

“Everyone likes Harrison Ford, anyone who wouldn’t do Harrison Ford is dumb.”

Christa laughed. “Yeah, so that’s all. Anyway. Thank you for telling me, I guess? I’m glad you trust me with that.”

“Don’t tell your parents.”

“Of course I wouldn’t tell my parents,” Christa snapped quickly, but not in a hostile tone. “With all the time we spend together? It would be weird.”

Ymir bit her bottom lip for a moment. “Because I like you. I just don’t care at this point. It keeps me up at night and crap, wondering whether you like me too or whether you’re just teasing.”

After a few moments of silence, Christa’s tiny voice trembled into her next words. “I’m really bad at this. At saying what I’m thinking about. I’m really, really glad you like me, though.”

“Is that, you know, in and  _I’m flattered but I don’t like you_  sort of way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know! But if I had to date anyone right now, it would be you. I like you more than anyone else and I’d rather be around you than around someone else. I just…”

Ymir’s heart sank and she knew. “…you can’t.”

“You know what my parents would think.”

“Do you think you like girls?”

“I like  _you_ ,” Christa said. “You’re kind of, like, beyond that.”

They were quiet for a long time. After that became too much, with too much swirling through her head and her heart in the darkness than she could possibly express, Ymir pushed her hand over, out from under the blanket on her side, and laid it on top of Christa’s side. She inched over. She turned toward her. “That’s pretty much the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

The mood shifted and they both felt it. Their eyes were starting to adjust to the light. Christa was washed in shades of dark when Ymir looked at her, and she heard her shift under the blankets, felt her bring her own hand out. Their fingers touched. They stayed quiet.

Without a word, Ymir pushed forward, and Christa edged into the motion. Their lips met chastely over the gap between the beds, and then Ymir pulled her hand up, laying a kiss on the back of her palm before holding it against her forehead. She laughed softly, too overwhelmed by happiness to express herself in any other way.

And that’s when more than just the mood shifted. Christa pulled her hand down, and pulled Ymir closer, all the way to the edge of the bed. Their fingers were still laced together and Christa was obviously not ready to let go, but she drew the corner of her own blanket up and tucked it over Ymir’s arm, hiding them beneath the covers as they looked at one another in the silence. A ceiling fan whirr was the only noise that rose above Ymir’s heartbeat as Christa pulled the hand around her and unlaced their fingers.

Ymir’s hand tightened on her small waist, feeling the soft heat and the skin of her lower back beneath the fabric of her t-shirt. Christa drew closer. They kissed again. They’d both kissed boys before. Christa’s first boyfriend was one she’d dated in 7th grade. He asked her out at lunch, she said yes, and they went behind the cafeteria for their first kiss between classes. Ymir kissed boys on dares and played spin the bottle, but she’d never actually  _dated_ anyone. She still wasn’t sure how it worked; if it was anything like being best friends with Christa, it was all she wanted for the rest of her life. She felt up the smooth curve of Christa’s back and they kissed harder, still not really going deeper, not sure of the pace. Ymir just didn’t want her to stop. She wanted Christa to set every bit of the pace, didn’t want to scare her off.

Turning her head and gasping, Christa nudged Ymir’s head over and smelled her hair before starting to kiss her neck. Just soft, sweet little kisses at first, as Ymir kept rubbing her hand on Christa’s back.

They relaxed slightly. The kisses died off. Ymir stilled her hand. Neither of them minded the gap between them. They were close enough.

Christa reached back, keeping her chin tucked on Ymir’s shoulder, and grabbed her hand. Before Ymir could say a word or even panic and freak out, she brought it around and placed it with not even a glimmer of hesitation on her breast. A gasp was all Ymir could manage. She felt Christa squirm slightly, maybe embarrassed at how forward she was being, but still neither said a word.

When she squeezed her hand where it was, gently tightening her palm over the swell of flesh, Christa let out a tiny moan, and Ymir felt an immediate rush of warmth go right for her crotch. Christa’s nipple was small and hard and poking against her palm through the fabric of her shirt.

Second base. So this is what it felt like. Ymir squeezed again, and pushed her hand, spreading her fingers in a V shape to catch the nipple between them when she did. She barely noticed Christa was kissing on her neck again.

“Can I go under your shirt?” Ymir asked, only finishing the question on pure adrenaline. All concept of what the words actually meant left her mind. All she wanted to do was reach under the hem and feel the heat of Christa’s skin.

Christa nodded on her collar. “Yeah.”

When her hand was on bare flesh, her fingertips rolling one nipple between them lazily, just mesmerized by the feeling and by the closeness of Christa’s body, Ymir edged forward just enough to disrupt the balance of weight between the beds. She swore softly as they started to move apart, and pulled her hand away just in time. She wound up with one leg on the floor and the trundle’s corner against Christa’s dresser as they both laughed. “That wasn’t smooth.”

“It’s fine,” Christa said. “That was… really okay.” Ymir pushed the beds back where they needed to be, maybe closer by degrees. She was disappointed that Christa turned onto her back and snatched the covers over to her own side.

“Did you like it?” Ymir asked when she got up the nerve.

“Yeah,” Christa answered in her own way, which wasn’t quite dismissive but also not quite as enthusiastic as someone with Ymir’s personality would have been in the same situation. “I’m just thinking maybe we should get to sleep for now.”

Silence again. Ymir looked up at the ceiling fan. “Are you scared because your parents are sleeping in the next room?”

“Yeah,” Christa said simply.

“Okay,” Ymir answered. And that was that. There was still so much confusion. Still so much left to talk about, to figure out. She tried not to think about pushing Christa’s shirt up and seeing what she’d just touched, hearing the way she might react without the worry and the silence in the room. She wanted to know how Christa’s nipple would feel under her tongue, how her skin would taste. How would she make another girl come? She’d never actually touched another girl before, even with a working knowledge of how it was supposed to go. Just the thought of touching Christa beneath her waist was something Ymir had to stop before things got out of hand in her own mind. “I hope that wasn’t really terrible or anything.”

“No!” Christa laughed. “No it was really nice. I’m just thinking about a lot.”

She understood. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

 Ymir had always written notes to Christa that she would hand off to her between classes, and vice versa. The next day she started the first note  _“Darling,”_  and waited to see if Christa would say anything about it. She got a note back on her way to History, and sat down to read it with her heart thumping in her throat.  _“Darling!”_ Christa’s note started, with an added parenthetical.  _“{or do you prefer baby? Ha ha)”_

It was hard to concentrate on the Monroe Doctrine after that.  


	7. Erwin and Levi at the Bent Ducat

Breaking character was unusual for him. It was always a small victory, when I was the reason he did it. Tirne was poised and graceful, a lioness and a whippet and a peacock all at once, and she had learned control beyond faltering. But every now and then she forgot that she was a lady; Tirne was a woman of means, beyond carnal pleasure. She got where she was by manipulating men, and there was a fire that ignited behind her calculating eyes when she was had the better of.

I had the better of her. I often had, since I met her and started to see how the lady switched off and Levi resurged, always riding on the velocity of desire with just a hint of defeated indignation. He’d kept character only barely during his song, straddling my lap with blatant intent, and if it would have been as simple as ripping into his stockings and having him in full view of the crowd I might have. Seeing his character break finally as he led me off the floor made it worth fighting those instincts.

He was a live wire buzzing so hot that I could practically feel it, and he was appearing only superficially as she. He raked his fingers down my chest and grabbed my shirtfront, pulled at me and then pushed me through the open door to the back hall of the Bent Ducat. I stumbled in spite of myself over the slightly uneven threshold, and couldn’t help laughing.

“What are  _you_ laughing about?” He asked me, and tapped the end of his bullwhip on my back. He wasn’t the one who used a bullwhip and he knew it. Tirne did, of course, but Tirne also didn’t usually make it past the threshold with me. Levi wanted me as a man, pure and simple. He wanted me as himself. We didn’t have need for theatrics.

“You made me stumble. You’re eager, that’s all.”

“You’re damn right, I’m eager. Get your hot ass back to my dressing room.”

“Oh, your dressing room?” I turned halfway and he stopped me again with the whip, nudging my head so that I kept my eyes to the front. I noticed in the moment that he’d already pulled his wig off. “Star treatment.”

“It pisses me off when you sound so fucking jovial, like we’re going to a picnic,” he grumbled, and as I rounded the corner toward his dressing room he reached in and grabbed a handful of my ass. I took the opportunity to turn on heel, snatching his wrist as I did. He struggled for the sake of struggling but didn’t falter in his heels, and we turned in a short, graceful dance as I pulled him close. I smirked down at his perfectly made-up face and he groped out for the door.

“Maybe I’m jovial,” I murmured, close as I was, but he turned away just in time to push the door open. We fell inside the dressing room, which smelled like hairspray and sweat and Chanel No. 5, which had been a gift from me. I said I always loved a lady who smelled like Chanel. “Maybe I’m very  _jovial_  to see you dressed like this and to have you sitting in my lap.”

The door was closed and our voices dropped to match the promise of what was to come. “I’m not in your lap now.” He swayed into me, getting closer. I could feel the padding on his hips underneath the stockings he wore, where the shortness of his dress would allow it.

“But you’re still dressed like this. I love this outfit.” I leaned closer, dipping my head in to kiss his neck and smell his perfume.

“Nnn? You do? You like the way it makes my titties look?” He asked, still swaying against me while the sneering vanity in his voice went straight for my head. He was already edging recklessly toward vulgar. I was more than ready to meet him head-on in that game.

I whispered against his ear, and the contact made him hiss as if I’d burned him just slightly. “You know I don’t care about your titties.”

Levi grabbed my hand and wrenched it off the small of his back, placing it on the curve of his ass. Again, I felt the padding before I felt anything else. “Your ass is fucking amazing, why do you put all this shit on it? I’ve never understood…” I reached down and yanked up his skirt, unconcerned with whether he cared. I knew he didn’t. Even with the stockings and the padding and the corset holding the rest of the dress tight on his waist I still groped him, squeezed him, inched my fingers down between his legs to the very real warmth I knew.

“It’s called creating a silhouette,” he breathed, peppering my neck with kisses. He was taller in heels. He could reach higher, and he didn’t have to climb me just so his lips would meet mine. He liked climbing me, though. He’d said as much before.

I ignored his words and turned into his mouth, and our lips met almost sweetly while my hand slipped further in. Levi jumped a little. He kept addressing me in that delicious, languid whisper. “Hey, hey, hey. Hold on, baby, I’ve got a little…”

Levi squirmed under me, almost chuckled, and my eyes fluttered open to see him bite his bottom lip. A rare move, that, but occasionally under the influence of Tirne he would pull out the coquettish charm. I didn’t expect that to last long, but I had to growl in appreciation at what I saw. I withdrew momentarily while he started to peel away his stockings.

“Get untucked and get your fucking panties off and spread that shit open for me,” I commanded him, kissing his ear and then his lips, turning away because I knew where he kept a bottle of lube and I had absolutely no desire to wait.

I had it in my hand when I turned and surveyed his progress moments later, blurting out, “Why are you taking those off?”

The need I had to fuck him in those boots was almost unbearable. He gave me a flip sigh and posed with one leg naked. “The stockings or the shoes; and I can fucking bet you want to spread my legs more than you want the other thing.”

“So then put them back on,” I said simply, and reached out to grab the bullwhip from his dressing table. I brandished it almost playfully, which certainly must not have matched the look in my eyes. “Don’t make me use this.”

“You’re fucking impossible,” he groused. Regardless, he was doing what I said. My tone hadn’t been the one I actually employed when I was likely to whip him (which I did, though not as often as we’d both surely like).

The mood wasn’t right for the whip today. We were ready; we knew what we needed and there was no way pain and submission would add anything to the experience. Levi was back into his boots in less than a minute, and not long after he was stripped otherwise from the waist down while I held his knees open and surveyed what I was beginning to consider my territory.

My palm pushed hard on his cock, pressing it against his stomach while he squirmed. We talked each other through the building tension as I lanced inside of him with my fingers, feeling him clench and squeeze around them. Levi kept his chest padded but clutched at his fake tits just as passionately as if they were real. When his hands turned on my shirt, plucking clumsily at buttons, I smiled and asked him, “Are you ready?”

He lifted his legs and actually managed to spread them a little wider, pushing against my fingers with a surprisingly mighty shove of his unlikeliest muscles. The way his hips moved never failed to impress me, and his flexibility had always been a pleasant hidden talent. “You know I like this first. Your cock doesn’t wiggle like that.”

I let out a breathy laugh and leaned in, close as I could, beckoning inside of him with a fluttering motion. As my mouth got closer to his, Levi arched his back and hissed at the feeling, squealing gently when I felt the tiny bump of his prostate and rubbed hard against it with the pad of my middle finger. In my short history of usually brief affairs with men, no one had ever appreciated a finger fuck as much as Levi. But then, he was one of the few completely aware of his own body. But then, he also appreciated everything else with equal fervor. He wasn’t the only one I asked for feedback, but he was the only one who  _gave it_ tome. “Okay, fuck me,” he finally said when he broke away from our kiss, and reached up to crook his arms. Even his unconscious poses made him look like he was bound. He knew what that did to me. “If you wait any longer I’m gonna come just looking at you.”

He made fun of me because I laughed a lot, but when I chuckled in the dark way I usually did, he knew the signal for what it was. “Do you think you could actually do that?”

My cock touched the slick dip of his ass and poked at him. Levi gasped, hissed. “Don’t test me.” The words got lost in his moan as I pushed inside of him. With one long thrust I took his breath away and probably his train of thought. His back came up from the dressing table’s surface and he yelped sharply at the feeling as my cock stretched him out beyond anything my fingers could have achieved. I chuckled again, which was a signal of my dominance, however innocuous it seemed.

Levi’s hands clamped on my shoulders, his legs flew open around me, and when I reached down to grab one of them I felt patent leather in my grip. “You think I wouldn’t? You think now that you’ve said that, I’m not thinking of putting you on your hands and knees and making you suck my cock, talking to you like this and just seeing if you can do it?”

Breathing out hard through his nose, Levi just held on as I rolled my hips into him, set the rhythm until he was meeting me in perfect time. He vocally ignored the scenario I’d mentioned, but I could tell by the way he was looking into my eyes that it was definitely on his mind. He was still piercing me with an unwavering gaze fortified with false lashes and eyeliner when he asked, “How is it, how’s my cunt?”

I’d grown up with polite fear of that word, and still lived with the weight of knowing I shouldn’t have been saying it. Words crept and caught fire under my skin, though. Levi loved that word and had guided me to use it, teaching me words he liked to hear in my voice, things that also made me hotter than I could sometimes stand.

My mouth dropped open and I panted. “You know I love your cunt, baby,” I said between hard breaths. When I paused, I thrust in harder than I’d meant to so soon. Levi clamped around me with everything he had, and his next cry feinted on its high note. “Fuck, you always sound like a dream when I’m in this deep.”

“You know,” he paused to catch his breath. “You’re technically fucking my internal organs at this point.”

I smirked. It only made me thrust in deeper, especially seeing the blush rise even under the layers of makeup he was wearing. I could see it in his ears, especially. Bright red edges of skin were showing me just how much of his poise he lost, willfully under my control.

“You love it.”

“I love your cock, daddy.”

God, that. Why did he have to call me that? It had always driven me insane, and in the moment I could only react with a bit of indignant machismo, angry at how excited it still made me. I slammed into him hard and he howled. I lifted his knees and held them up like obscene handlebars as I watched the delirious smile spread over his face while I kept that rhythm. From Levi it was never “stop,” from Levi it was never less, it was never slower, it was never a directive to be calmer or more methodical. He gave me a license to explore my voracity and then he begged me to abuse it, just by lying there with one palm up on my chest, a mock pose suggesting that he might push me off even though the fingertips curled against the exposed skin subtly.

He started to let out those dull, flat cries on every thrust, signaling the sort of concentration that often preceded his orgasm. And he knew I wanted him to come before I did. I liked to feel him quiver and tighten up with it, trapping my cock as I shot everything inside of him, but that wasn’t what I wanted quite yet. “No, stop,” I panted, and Levi’s eyes flew open with stunned urgency. I explained myself quickly enough, slowing my hips as I did. “No… No, I’ve got to hold off a little. I’m gonna be busy for a few days so I don’t want this to be quick. Wanna remember this.”

When I looked down at him, seeking approval, Levi gave it to me with a long smirk and a deep moan, and his miraculous hips pulled away just enough to give me the pause I needed. We met in a lazy collision, and my thrusts turned deep and purposeful as I bent over him to curl my tongue inside his mouth.

Kissing the lovers I took wasn’t something in which I’d ever found anything beyond momentary, perfunctory pleasure. Not until Levi, when I realized that a kiss could be just as exciting, just as powerful, just as breathtaking a backdrop as anything that we got up to below the belt. Perhaps not as explosive, but it definitely made my heart beat faster when I felt him breathing against me, heard the sounds of him up close as his teeth grazed my tongue. I remembered the first time on the bed in our hotel room, that long week together when I pulled away from his wet lips and traced the shape of a smile with my thumb. “You’re smiling,” I told him, sounding stunned I’m sure. “I’m just happy,” he replied sleepily, and I kissed that smile again.

I almost forgot I was still inside him, until I started to kiss down his body and he moaned when I pulled out. My hands found the cheap satin necktie on his collar and pulled at it, freeing it from the bodice of his dress until it slid easily away from his neck. “What are you gonna do with that?” Levi asked softly.

Our cocks slid together while I looped the tie around his wrists and knotted it. I kissed his mouth and he tried to bite my lips as I broke contact to whisper, “I’m going to suck your cock.”

While I was still there, rewarding him with another kiss and then another, our hips ground together with the force of his legs wrapped around my back. I was stalling because I’d gotten an even better idea. I reached over and pulled at the first bit of fabric I touched, worried for a moment that it might not be suitable. It was an opera glove, the sort Tirne wore occasionally. Good enough.

Levi gasped when I slipped it behind his head, and just before I crisscrossed the ends to hide his eyes, he gave me a sparkling look of fascination. “God, yes,” he breathed, and bucked his hips to rub his cock sharply into mine. I grunted and turned the makeshift blindfold around once it was secure, running my hands softly over the flat of it where his eyes were covered.

“Okay?” I asked.

“Suck my cock.” His lips were still tinted red with what lipstick I hadn’t kissed off.

Maybe he assumed I had decades of experience, but I didn’t. I’d just buried my face between his thighs, the first time, and realized that his desires were suited to my natural skills. After that, he didn’t have a single note for me toward improvement. That his cock was perfect to practice on didn’t hurt. It filled my mouth exquisitely while I held his ass up in my hands and heard the squeak of leather against leather where his knees bent over my shoulders. When he whimpered or cried out or threw me a growling compliment I squeezed his ass harder, just to let him know I heard.

“Fuck me…” He growled. For once I didn’t obey, no matter how his voice made my cock throb. My fingers teased the wet ring of his hole; I moved them around there, just barely pressing in while I sucked him to the back of my throat. He started throwing me insults, then. “Oh, god. You motherfucker. You son of a bitch, what are you doing?”

But it felt too good, so he didn’t tell me to stop. Besides, he wanted to know what I was up to. That was never a question. I’d never let him down before so he just quaked in my hands and went with it. Levi hadn’t expected to come so soon, but he also couldn’t help doing so. He breathed out hard, a few huffs of disbelief, and he whined for me beautifully when I drew up to work the head of his cock as he started to come. He kept spurting impressively and I allowed it to fill my mouth, held it there until he started cursing me again and I knew the main event was over. I pulled away to leave him untouched for the time being; I usually would have licked and squeezed and sucked him until he convulsed with overstimulation and yelled at me to stop, until I knew he was completely cleaned out.

He panted below me, blindfolded and bound. “You plan on doing that again, or are you just going to—“

I interrupted him and he actually chirped in surprise, letting out a high note that went straight for my cock when I rolled his hips in and stepped closer, bending his body in front of me to look straight down at his ass. “God,” he gasped. “God, just—“

He was still distended, still winking open for me and because of me, so I just kissed him there. Levi’s come slid out of my open mouth slowly, following the trail of my tongue. He jumped and clenched a little at first, until he realized what was happening and moaned.

Levi didn’t say anything, but then he didn’t really need to. I curled my tongue deep in his ass and licked back out of him, ensuring that he felt his own come inside before I kissed his balls and waited for a moment. I considered just pounding into him again, but only readjusted our position and loosened his posture, giving him more space to breathe as I contemplated the view. “You’re still blown open for me. Pretty little ass like this shouldn’t be left empty so long.”

There was a red mark on his inner thigh where I’d bitten him less than a week ago. There was a fading one on his ass where I’d broken his skin with the whip. He had great capacity for making me push my own boundaries. I’d never figured on anyone being prepared to go as far as I was willing to go. I just wished we had more time to explore what that meant. I wished I had less to worry about, to allow me to do it.

It took a fluttering tease of my fingers over Levi’s asshole to goad him into replying. “I want you,” he croaked.

I slid two fingers into him slowly. He appreciated it, and rocked against me. “More,” he whispered.

I kept going, kept pushing, kept making him cry out in tender, painful pleasure until his voice got louder. “Fuck me!”

“I  _am_  fucking you…” I knew the sort of things that set him off, and contradicting him was number one on the list.

“Fuck!” He shouted and growled, writhing and readjusting himself as I banged into his prostate, over and over. “You know what I fucking mean. Give me that fucking cock, come in my ass and eat it all back out of me.”

I actually paused. He’d actually taken me off guard with that one. I gave him a parting gift, a sharp jab and a curl of my fingers that produced a tortured whimper before I pulled my hand away. Breathlessly, thickly, I acknowledged his request. “You nasty bitch.”

Not that we hadn’t done it before. We were both acquainted with that. Neither of us had been expecting it that night. We hadn’t even expected to  _see_ one another that night. I’d only come in for a drink and to talk to a couple of friends. Maybe it was the sudden derailing of everything else that made it so overwhelming.

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t crawl on broken glass to get in my pussy,” he said as he felt me fall over him, lined lips snarling over his teeth as deep breaths filled his chest.

My hand shot out and grabbed his hair, yanked his head back as far as I could given our limited space, and waited until I heard that little mewl of submission before I kissed him roughly. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t beg for the chance to even look at this cock.”

“Well,” he hissed back, “since I can’t see shit right now can I beg you to fuck me until I can’t shit straight?”

I whispered right against his lips. “You may.”

His sincerity was sometimes humbling, when his control of the situation was stripped away. He paused for a beat. My fingers stayed where they were, locked tightly in his hair, bending his neck back. “Please fuck me. Please. I want your cock, I need your body, fucking  _take my ass_.” Maybe that’s what Levi loved so much about me. Maybe the dynamic was everything. I didn’t want to waste time wondering if that’s what made him happy, and what that said about both of us. “Please, daddy…”

“What’s my name?” I wanted to hear him say it. He so rarely said it.

“Erwin…” The way it left his mouth like a fragile, secret whisper made my heart throb right in my throat, more than a sexual jolt and more than I wanted to contemplate at that moment.

“Say that again.” I let go of his hair and grabbed Levi’s chin somewhere between firmly and gently with my cockhead pressed against his hole.

He canted toward me, opened his mouth on the surge of need, and wrapped his voice more thoroughly around my name. “Erwin!”

“Fuck. Levi.” I pressed into him, re-entering the slick, tight heat with slow rolls of my hips, and leaned over him, whispering his name again on every thrust, meeting him for a kiss. I ran soothing touches over his hair, over his chin, calming the places I’d grabbed so greedily.

It was probably only two minutes before I pulled back and said, “Turn over.”

The dressing table would have been the perfect height if I matched Levi’s stature. Instead, I had to pull his feet from the floor, even in his heels, and hold him off the ground to meet my cock while he braced himself on the surface with only his chest and elbows. His hands were still tied above his head, and he balled his fists through the thick of it while assuring me, when I asked, that it was okay.

“Fuck, keep going, it’s great. It feels so good. Fuck me harder, let me feel that shit, oh my god…” Things fell off and rolled away on the floor, things that obviously weren’t important.

I glanced at the mirror only once. I’d been trying to avoid the thing until that point. I had Levi to look at, after all. When we were fucking he was the only reflection I needed.

“Are you going to come again?” I asked him.

“It feels like I’ve been coming for the last twenty years, would you fucking squirt already!” He managed, and it was what made me chuckle again. I pressed a palm to his back and felt him struggling to breathe, but he never told me to stop, to lighten up, to ease off, so I didn’t.

I did make him come again, and I knew it when he started a long, desperate moan that sounded more like an electric hum, throwing his ass back onto my cock and tightening around it breathtakingly. I couldn’t move much but I still did my best. I couldn’t get much deeper but I still tried, I fucking championed that cause as his body took me over the edge. I’d asked him once before, because I was curious, whether he got off on penetration. “Not usually,” he’d responded, flicking ash into the ashtray and smirking at me to finish the statement wordlessly.

I didn’t even make a sound, I was so caught up in listening to him, as he hissed and moaned and maybe said my name again while I filled his ass, knowing my come was joining his in an unholy wreck.

We went suddenly quiet, except for the blood pounding in both of our heads, the breath rollicking in our chests. I thrust in just once more and felt him spasm with a tiny cry between hard breaths of recovery.

He shifted but I reached out and grabbed his ass, squeezed it in my grip. “Don’t move,” I commanded him. He practically became a statue. He didn’t even say a word.

I slid out of him and bent down, and silently appreciated the sticky trail that broke off from my cock before I laid my tongue against it and licked up the inside of his thigh, past the curve of his ass. I tickled the gaping rim of his hole playfully, drawing an unintended gasp from him before I sealed my mouth over it and gently started sucking.

My fingernails scratched his skin possessively and I stretched my tongue in as far as I could, seeking my quarry and finding it as I angled his hips down and knelt further, still milking his ass slowly.

“God damn,” he whispered hotly, breaking the silence though I expected him to when I reached between his legs to feel his cock. It was still dribbling with the desperate vestiges of an orgasm his body hadn’t planned to have, and probably didn’t have much to offer. Still, I’d felt it from the inside out. I’d made it happen, and that was what mattered to me. The beautiful, barely breathing angel tied up and waiting for me was the only thing that mattered as long as I was around him.

I wasn’t thinking, at that moment, about what a problem that was.

“God  _damn!_ ” He repeated when I squeezed his cock like I was wringing out a rag, and I smiled around everything that filled my mouth, forgetting about anything unpleasant, anything uncomfortable. “You perfect son of a bitch, that’s right. Eat my ass.”

He temporarily lost the capacity to speak. He seemed exhausted. His legs were like dead weight when I rose up and turned him over. I pushed the blindfold easily off of his head, but kept the tie around his hands. He looked up at me, eyeliner and mascara just slightly smudged, and his lips parted wide on the next breath he took. I didn’t let him close them. I opened my mouth on his and he surged against me when he realized it was still full. He moaned softly into me, vibrating through me, growling, perhaps angry at me for the indiscretion. But I’d told him from the beginning, he had every right to say no, to say stop, at any time. Levi never said stop. His eyes flew open and I felt the whoosh of his fake lashes, so I opened my eyes as well.

His tongue swiped through my mouth and cleaned me out. I pulled away just enough to say, plainly, “Swallow it.”

The fact that his ears had turned bright red again did not go unnoticed as his eyes fluttered shut and he gulped, letting go of a relieved little noise when he did. I stroked my fingers down his cheek. “You nasty bitch,” I said gently.

“Not usually,” he countered, sounding quite proud of himself, and lifted his bound hands to trap my neck in a violent kiss.

By the time I untied him and he peeled off the rest of his costume, paraded around weak and stumbling and confident with bright pink marks dug into his skin from the bra and the corset, I was lost in a beautiful haze of not thinking. He washed his mouth out with Listerine and called me a dirty fuck, and I just smirked and unconsciously spread my legs a little wider in the chair I’d taken.

“I could do that again later. Get a little more elaborate, though. We never got the chance to use that whip. Wanna get a room tonight?” I asked. I actually felt a little shy to do it, like Levi might say no.

He did. “Nah. I came here with a friend.” He looked away from me pointedly and pulled on a t-shirt. “I need to drop him off back home.”

I nodded. “That’s a real shame.”

I think he must have caught the mourning in my tone, because he sighed and turned to me as he kept getting dressed. “Much as I do want to wake up smelling like you… with a spreader bar between my knees… I’ll take a rain check.” He smiled at the thought, at least, and lifted a leg to step into his jeans. He stumbled and fell against the door of his wardrobe.

“Can you walk?” I asked, incredulous but proud of my handiwork.

“Yeah!” He laughed to cover the fact that he was, indeed, having a little trouble. “Don’t be so amused.”

“Should I apologize?”

“ _Sorry I’ve got something between my legs that’ll gut you when I get my shit going;_ yeah, that? No. That’s okay. I’d rather get fucked like that than dance for the Bolshoi any day.”

Levi buttoned his jeans and walked back over to me. His legs still weren’t ready to stay closed, so he poured himself back into my lap, facing me. A wave of silent need passed between us again, and my hand drifted beneath his shirt and up the balmy heat of his back. “It’s a waste that you stay clothed so often,” he remarked. We kissed.

“Well, when you’ve got the new apartment I’ll be sure to come over and strut around naked as much as you want.”

He let go of a ragged breath and just kissed me again, harder. When he was ready to part, swaying with exhaustion, he tilted his forehead into mine and whispered. “Make me breakfast naked. Read the paper naked. Set my VCR naked. I’ll just keep you at home naked and ready to fuck me whenever I want it.”

I laughed. He laughed too. “Wouldn’t that get old? Isn’t this what makes it exciting?”

I don’t know that he read me, or that I put any unintentional subliminal bent on my words, but he picked up on  _something_ and stood up, using me as a brace when he did. “You’re right.”

“Go meet your friend,” I told him, smacking him lightly on the ass when he turned from me. “I’ll see myself out.”

“Shamefully sneaking out the back, I see.”

I quirked an eyebrow but he didn’t see me do it. “I think that’s what you want me to do.”

“Hn.” He grabbed his cigarettes and his lighter and I saw him smile in the brief second that his face was turned to me.

I’d tell him later, I thought, for not the first time.


	8. Secret Boyfriends

“Who’s Bert…hol…duh…t?”

Reiner neglected to pause his game and turned around immediately, throwing one arm over the back of the rec room sofa and yelling at the question. “What are you doing? Why do you have my notebook? Give me that!”

Luka pointed at the television and giggled. “You died.”

The music let Reiner know that he’d bombed that particular level, but Donkey Kong Country could wait. “What. Are you  _doing_. With my notebook, Luka?”

“How do you pronounce this name? Why do you know all this stuff about him?”

He jumped, rather ungracefully but that didn’t matter, over the back of the couch and started to chase after her. Luka was only eight years old, but being small meant that she had mobility where Reiner did not.

“Is this his phone number?”

“Luka, give that back to me!” She slid beneath the kitchen table and Reiner was on his hands and knees reaching after her by the time she popped right out the other side and took off for the stairs. “I’m not kidding! I’m going to kill you!”

“You won’t kill me!” She teased him, and Reiner tripped up a couple of stairs running after her as his little sister read off three bullet points from the page he knew all too well, he’d reread it so many times.

She was bouncing on his bed, in his room (where she’d obviously been snooping through his things) when he caught up to her. Despite the frustration and embarrassment, Reiner couldn’t help going easy on her. He brought her down with his arms around her legs and she squealed with laughter, wiggled and tried to twist free of his grasp. “Stop! Stop! Don’t tickle me!”

Her laughter was actually ear-piercingly shrill, but Reiner could live through that. “Don’t go through my stuff! That’s rude!”

“Why are you writing all these things about some person? Who is this?”

He finally snatched the book away from her. A quick lie snuck into his brain and he held Luka in a gentle but inescapable headlock as he told it. His spiral-bound notebook was still open to the page with its header: Bertholdt Hoover. “It’s for a project for school. We have to interview someone else and write a biography about them.”

“They don’t even go to your school! It says it right there at the top.”

1 – Senior at St. Maria’s Catholic School

“Yeah.” Luckily, he was good at rolling with a story. “That’s part of it, dummy. You have to interview someone from another school.”

“Sounds stupid.”

“Shut up. It’s not stupid. Don’t look through my things. Get out.” He released her and pulled her ponytail – which earned him another shriek – as Luka ran out of his room.

She’d either wanted his attention or she’d wanted to distract him from the Nintendo long enough that she could take over the controller.  _Whatever_ , he thought, swinging his bedroom door closed with one foot, still holding the notebook open in his hands.

Bertholdt Hoover

1 – Senior at St. Maria’s Catholic School

2 – Plays center forward (soccer)

3 – Lives next door to Jean (rich?)

His first thought, getting into the cart at the hayride that night, hadn’t been anything particular regarding Bertl. Hearing Jean tease him so snidely put Reiner in an immediate aggressive stance, expecting a nerd or a wimp, probably both. Someone easy to pick on, at least.

They talked back and forth as the hayride went on, while the others kept to their own conversations and Reiner focused on not paying attention to Erwin Smith for his own good. It took several minutes for Bertl to open up and start responding to his questions, jokes, or random comments, but when he finally did they were in pitch darkness except for a few flashlight beams here and there, and all Reiner could think was  _I like the way this guy talks._

4 – Teen Court

5 – Science in College? Chemistry, Botany, Biology???

He never found out what he wanted to study, because talking about college was just scary and it brought Reiner down, considering everything else going on. When they were by the bonfire, warming up, he’d finally gotten a good look at Bertl. That’s when things got interesting. First of all, he had to look  _up_ at Bertl, which was just fine by him. But that’s when he suddenly scrambled to try and remember every word that had been spoken, every nuance and every subtle maybe-hint, because that’s when Reiner thought  _oh no, he’s cute._

6 – Philadelphia Eagles, Houston Rockets, doesn’t really watch baseball   

They hadn’t talked about sports for very long. When Bertl talked about the Rockets, Reiner got over-excited and mentioned his family in Texas. He ended up going on about how his dad was from West Virginia and his mom was from Texas, but Bertl was a good listener. “All my family lives here,” he said with a nod, and then asked how long Reiner had known Jean.

He was almost jealous, for two seconds, before he realized that they didn’t really have much else to go on so Jean was, of course, going to come into it. They talked about where they’d grown up and where they hung out, realized they’d gone to the same elementary school but probably had never noticed each other.

Reiner, because he was forward and foolish sometimes for that, asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No!” Bertl answered, almost jumping at the suggestion and looking away. “No, that’s… I don’t.”

7 – Single.

_He might be,_ Reiner kept thinking to himself, holding the notebook in his lap, chewing on the inside of his cheek.  _He might be, he might be._

Bertholdt Hoover was tall and awkward, bashful and soft-spoken, smart and athletic, and it had taken four hours for Reiner to get up the courage to ask for his number. “You know, if you ever want to hang out or something.” Bertl had responded like he had no idea how to handle the question, like he wasn’t asked very often, if ever.

8 – Phone number is 804-785-3881

They flagged down Mr. Zacharius, trusting somehow that he would have a pen on his person, and he did. Reiner wrote the number on his hand and never returned the pen.

It was early enough In the evening, he figured, that it wouldn’t be weird to call. He picked up the cordless off his bedside table and almost dialed the number.

Before he finished it, he hung up the phone entirely and fell back on the bed. He’d never felt so conflicted at the thought of liking someone, before. He’d had a girlfriend in middle school, and another in his sophomore year, just because he’d thought he  _needed_ a girlfriend regardless of whether he felt anything about her. But with girls no longer his focus, even though some important things felt a lot easier, other things were much more complicated. It was strange, having a crush and not having the security of knowing that it might someday happen, if all the other parameters aligned. So on the one hand, he tried to calm himself down and not get caught up on the idea of Bertholdt, talking to him, getting know him. The other hand pushed ahead and pointed right at him, though, and Reiner was worried that if he didn’t act soon he might never know.

He dialed the number completely on the next try, and tried not to panic while it rang.

A peppy voice answered.  _Probably his mom._ “Hoover residence.”

“Hi! Um… Mrs. Hoover? Is Bertholdt there?”

“Yeah!” She answered in a snappy way, but her tone indicated a certain level of amusement. “Who’s calling?”

“Um…” He almost froze. “It’s Reiner.”

“Reiner?” She repeated.

“Yeah.” Reiner’s voice got smaller. He was a student leader and could take a 250 pound dude tackling him to the ground by his waist, but he couldn’t handle a middle-aged woman asking his name so she could repeat it to his crush.

He heard the woman yelling in the background. “Bertl! Phone’s for you.”

Just barely, Bertl’s voice cried back, “Who is it?”

The voices dropped to mumbles that he could make out, but seconds later he heard the clatter of the phone being picked up and hoped for the best. “Hey.”

Reiner cleared his throat. “Hey!”

“Wow, it is you. I thought she said Reiner but I have a friend name Jane and, you know… never mind.”

“You’re not eating dinner or anything?”

“Not last time I checked,” Bertl said, and it took Reiner a moment to realize it had been a joke. Thinking back, he  _had_ been unexpectedly witty when they’d talked before, too. “Why, what’s up?”

_Something. Something. There had to be something. You can’t just call a dude for no reason, Reiner, there has to be something._

“Uh, yeah! I was just calling to ask, are you going to Jean’s Halloween party?”

Bertl let out a breathy laugh and Reiner could practically see the insecure smirk on his face as he did. “I don’t really think Jean Kirschtein wants me coming to his party.”

“Well, that’s not what I heard, I heard him invite everyone in that cart.”

“Yeah, but it would be weird and I don’t really like parties.”

That was a difficult one to recover from. But Reiner was nothing if not good at improvising. “Well I need someone to help with the costume I wanna do and I thought of you. So I sort of want you to come with me.”

In his mind, it had been really smooth. Bertl’s half-second pause, though, terrified him. “What do you mean, help with your costume?”

Reiner sighed. “The Blues Brothers. I wanna do the Blues Brothers.”

Bertl snickered. “Okay.”

“Okay, good okay, or okay, you think I’m a dork because I’m planning my costume already?”

“Just okay!”

A little embarrassed, Reiner sighed. “So yeah, I need someone taller than me and I thought of you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“What, you  _are_  taller than me.”

“I’m taller than like  _everyone_ , Reiner, god. Anyway, this is just, like… going to Jean’s, I don’t know.”

“Bertl, he doesn’t hate you. He’s just a prick sometimes but he’s a good guy.”

“Ugghhh…” He trailed off on an unenthused groan.

“Would it help if I just said I’d kick his ass if he gave you any trouble?”

“Why would you do that?” At least it made him laugh a little.

“Because you’re my friend.”

“Okay.”

Again, he wanted to ask for clarification.  _Okay, just okay, or okay you’re disappointed that I didn’t say I like you, like I wanted to?_

After a short pause, Bertl went on. “So, um, can I confess something to you, then?”

Reiner’s heartbeat throbbed in his throat. “What? Yeah, okay, I guess so. What is it?”

“I’ve never even watched The Blues Brothers all the way through. Like, I’m aware of it. I know who they are and everything but, the movie. I’ve never watched the movie all the way through.”

“What?” Reiner’s adrenaline spiked and fell and he used the contrasting rush to be perhaps a little too enthusiastic. He jumped off his bed and started to scramble out of his room and downstairs. “You’re kidding me; it’s such a good movie!”

“I see it come on TV now and then but I always just zone out during the commercials.”

“Please tell me you thought it was funny – what you saw at least.”

“Yeah, I did! I love John Belushi, I’m just so behind in movies I wanna watch.”

“Well, what are you doing tonight?” Reiner walked past the couch where Luka was, indeed, playing Nintendo in his absence, and opened the cabinet on the entertainment center.

“Huh? Um, I’m working on a lab report.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. Wanna watch a movie? Because I can totally bring the movie over.”

It was one of those all or nothing situations. He knew that if Bertl said no, he might never ask anything like it again. He’d cool off and be a casual friend, calling occasionally, trying to convince himself he didn’t have a crush on the cute tall guy he’d scared off in the first week of knowing him. “Okay.”

_Okay, just okay, or okay you just had to stop for a second and catch your breath to remind yourself not to sound too excited, because you sure sound like you’re smiling._

He added: “But I really do have to finish this lab report so give me an hour and I’ll call you when I’m done?”

Reiner knew he would spend the next hour waiting for the phone to ring. “Yeah, that’s cool.”

“What’s your phone number?”

He gave Bertl his phone number and told his dad he was going to a friend’s house and would be taking the movie. His dad, ever attentive about such matters, showed such approval that the ensuing conversation uncovered the plans for Reiner’s Halloween costume, which led to his dad having him try on his hats so he wouldn’t have to buy a cheap one at the costume shop. It took up about an hour, and Bertl called back almost exactly at 7:30.  

The front door of the Hoover house had a custom stained glass window in it, and the small room just inside of it was actually floored in marble. There were pictures framed on the sideboard next to the coat rack, which Reiner noticed as Bertl invited him in and asked him to take his shoes off because “My mom’s weird about that.”

“Whoa, that’s the governor,” Reiner paused and eyed one of the photos. “Is that your dad with him?”

“Yeah, my dad does his teeth.”

“Your dad’s a  _dentist?_ ” It didn’t seem commensurate with the size of the house.

“Not really.” Bertl shrugged. “An oral surgeon, he does custom work and reconstructive surgery and stuff.”

“That’s really cool.”

“Mom’s a plastic surgeon.”

His mother actually appeared at that point, coming around the corner and wiping her hands on a dish towel. She was so short that Reiner was actually taken aback. Bertl had obviously inherited her nose. She was attractive. That ran in the family as well. “Hi! You’re Reiner?” She covered her mouth quickly. “Sorry, I’m eating a cookie. Sorry.” 

She held out her hand and Reiner shook it. “It’s okay. Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“Make yourself at home!” She gestured. Reiner couldn’t really begin to think about doing that. His eyes traveled through the arch leading into what was obviously the living room, and he noticed that the television was the size of a small billboard. “First rule of this house is, you don’t have to ask for anything.”

_What if I want your son to smooch my face, is that something I don’t have to ask for?_

“Thank you.”

“You already took your shoes off, that’s the only other rule.” She laughed, obviously greatly pleased by that.

Bertl sighed and started into the living room, gesturing for Reiner to follow. “We’re going up to my room, mom. We’re gonna watch a movie.”

“Did you finish your lab report?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Have fun!”

Bertl’s room was on the second floor, with a vaulted, slanted ceiling and big sliding glass doors that led to a small balcony looking out on the lake. “Dad had the house built five years ago, so it’s pretty new.”

“Your house is really cool,” Reiner said, trying not to show how impressed he was. “It’s so big.”

Bertl shrugged and sat down on the small loveseat facing his television. It was a modest set, compared to the behemoth downstairs. “Yeah, my parents make a lot of money I guess.”

“Is your mom Indian?”

“Yeah.” He seemed to perk up a little. “Well, I mean, she’s  _American_ , she was born in Maryland, but yeah.”

“That’s… you know what I meant. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It’s okay.” He paused and looked over at Reiner. “You can sit down.”

Holding his backpack in one hand, Reiner walked over and tried to be cool as he took the seat next to Bertl. “So do you—“

“Okay, before we watch the movie or talk any more about this I have to say something else.”

Expecting another harmless remark, Reiner leaned back on the arm of the couch and smirked. “Yeah?”

“I’m gay.”

Reiner was stunned to the point that his eyes went out of focus and he couldn’t even remember how words worked.

“I mean, you hang out with Jean so I think it’s okay with you, but… I want to make sure you’re cool with that before we—“

“Oh my god.”

“What?” Bertl leaned back and shrunk away slightly, as slightly as a 6’3” seventeen year old could shrink away.  

“No, just  _oh my god_ I didn’t expect you to say that. Like, at all.”

“Uggghhh…” Bertl put his hands over his face and proceeded to hide.

“So you seriously didn’t hear about me? Like from anyone?” Reiner asked, probably too sharply because the other boy flinched.

“What do you mean?” He sounded extremely worried.

“That I’m gay.”

“ _You’re gay?!_ ”

Reiner just nodded and shrugged and felt the tension on the loveseat reaching critical levels.

“Oh my god!” Bertl cried out after a second or two.

“What?”

“But you’re the straightest guy I’ve ever talked to!”

“No, trust me, I’m not!”

He was sweating. Reiner found it so oddly attractive that he couldn’t help leaning forward a little.

“Are you messing with me? I seriously think you’re messing with me and I’m getting really uncomfortable right now!”

The indignant tone in Reiner’s voice rose. “You’re the one who told me you were gay!”

“Because I like you!” Bertl paused, his eyes went really wide, and then he looked away quickly. “Like, as a friend! As a friend!”

“Are you  _sure?_ ” Reiner went with anything he could to ease the tension, even if it meant joking where Bertl might not have been quite as comfortable with making light. He leaned closer over the break between cushions.

“Oh my god.”

“Are you  _suuuuure?_ ”

“Please don’t mess with me. Please don’t make fun of me.”

“I think you’re really cute.”

Bertl’s face jerked back to look at Reiner, and he jumped back slightly when he noticed how close he was.

They stayed quiet for a few moments, and Bertl still looked petrified by everything that was happening.

“I’m being totally honest,” Reiner let his eyes drop to the cushion as he said it, trying to sound as sincere as he could.

“Oh my god.”

“Yes, oh my god.” Reiner mimicked him.

“I’m really freaking out right now!” Bertl cried.

“That’s really cute, too.”

“Stop it!” His hands flew up and he covered his face again. Reiner went with his first instinct, which was to reach up and try to pry them off. He was laughing and Bertl was just shaking his head back and forth.

“I’m serious, I didn’t ask for your number for no reason.”

Finally Bertl let him see his face again, and there they were. Reiner was holding onto his hands (balmy hands, yes, sweaty in his grasp), holding them out, and he was smiling. When he started to chuckle nervously, Bertl waited several seconds before following suit. Little by little, they moved apart again, and Reiner let his hands fall off of Bertl’s, though reluctantly. Silence and nervous laughter mixed with shaky breath prevailed in the meantime.

“Do you want to, um—“

“—huh?” Bertl looked up suddenly like he was terrified of any possibility Reiner might mention.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Reiner’s heartbeat started beating immediately in his ears. He was surprised he could hear Bertl’s next words.

“My parents don’t know,” he whispered.

“Your mom seems cool.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that they  _don’t know_. And I knew nothing about you being gay, so does that mean—“

“Yeah I’m kind of keeping it quiet for now, too.”

They paused.

“Wanna…” Bertl scratched the back of his neck and shrugged, grimacing before he asked, “Wanna be my secret boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Reiner answered without hesitation. “Yeah, I do.”

They looked at each other and Bertl actually held eye contact for a couple of seconds before glancing away. “I… okay. Okay, cool.”

During the movie, they didn’t say much. About thirty minutes in, Reiner reached over and covered Bertl’s hand with his. It took fifteen seconds for Bertl to grab his fingers tighter and then lean over.

Once again, Bertl miraculously managed not to watch the rest of The Blues Brothers. Making out with Reiner was far preferable to zoning out during commercials, though.   


End file.
